Wishes
by Rayless Night
Summary: Salome the Traitor joined her fate to a demon who wished to dominate the universe. She said she desired power, but it took a different strength to fulfill her wish.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: _Makai Kingdom_ is the property of Nippon Ichi Software. Rating is for language, violence, and sexual themes; given the story's focus on Salome, rape is a fairly central issue. _

_This story has been heavily edited since it first went up in 2006; see the note for chapter 8 for more details._

* * *

Wishes

It's an old story, and you might hear it again,

About a woman whose name meant

_peace of the holy place_

who brought heedless destruction in steel and blood.

The story about the girl who had such talent

she was granted the chance at her heart's wish,

and she did not know what it was.

1

You wouldn't have thought it was a bad idea either. After all, I had talent. I was a priestess no less, of the White Hand, and my beliefs had every reason to actualize themselves. The kingdom was in turmoil, its interior shattered while enemies closed in at every point of the compass. It was the hopeless, insufferable situation that I couldn't stand for long, and when the Brave Party formed, I knew it was my place to be at its hub.

My place. I knew what it was, I knew it was my right to be in it, and I knew no one was going to stop me.

Things worked very well. If the kingdom's lifeblood was oozing away, the Brave Party cauterized the wounds. I hadn't killed before joining. But then, I never saw the people I killed. My place in battle was to the rear, sending out shockwaves and arcs of Mana high over my head to the enemies at the far end of the field. I knew they were humans. I knew that, if I stopped to think, I'd realize how much I hurt inside. So I made myself stop. I made myself know my own grief. It nearly consumed me. Could I refuse to fight? But it was my place to fight. I had the power. If I wasn't to use it, why would I even exist at all?

I spoke to our leader, Seedle, about it. The greatest warrior of our age, a one-eyed samurai with flowing white hair, the lord of the Brave Party. Our future king, if all went well. He told me not to worry. But he told me nothing else.

I worried. I dreaded the coming battles. I spent my Mana on healing the wounded, even begging Seedle to be allowed to heal the enemy wounded. Anything to make recompense. Any way to show them... that I wasn't a monster. Seedle let me.

Our next battle took the kingdom. Our infantry pushed through the floundering defense. I stood to the back, my place, hands shaking. I knew my duty. I gathered my Mana into my hands, felt it push between my fingers, resonate through my body and clear my vision. I saw a thin, wavering line of soldiers parallel to our own. The enemy.

My Mana blasted across the battle field, lighting the ground it arced on fire. When it impacted, there was nothing but a burst of light and bloody debris.

My heart throbbed dully, as if it had just been pierced by a sword and had only that one beat left.

"I am a murderer," I said that night. My voice was much quieter than I thought it would be.

Seedle had claimed the royal apartments already, and I had found him in the library, surveying the disarray left by the court's hasty evacuation and imprisonment. He looked over a bare shoulder at me and smiled. "You are one of the saviors."

"Not to those men that entered hell today."

Seedle sighed and shook his head. "War makes monsters of us all. All we can hope is that we are the ones willing to overcome evil."

I shook my head, his fine words making me bleaker. "I don't understand."

"Salome," he said and waited a bit on the syllables of my name. "Do you know how to protect yourself against arsenic?"

"Of course."

He lifted a finger. "Then you should have your answer. You protect yourself by injecting arsenic into your system. Such is our battle. We must become as evil as they are to destroy them."

"I..." Ha. I didn't know what to say. What I felt I _did_ know...he was telling me it was wrong. "I chose to destroy them, knowing they could not defend themselves." I looked at the strewn books and papers on the floor, the unfurled scrolls, the scattered styluses and the splattered ink. I looked up when I felt him move next to me. He was smiling sympathetically at me, a smile heroes always wear to try to make their uncertain followers as heroic as they are themselves.

"Salome- "

"Don't touch me," I said quietly. His hands dropped from my shoulders. I felt a bit disgusted with myself, but I didn't like being touched most of the time. Even though he was just trying to be kind. I had been raised from infancy in the temple and had never known my parents. The priestesses had not recommended much interaction with the male guards who watched the sacred confine. He frowned, offended. I smiled slightly, to show that it wasn't his fault, just my preference.

I don't think I smiled ever again in that life.

He smiled back. There was a short bark of thunder. I turned towards the wide, floor-to-ceiling window that faced west across the smoking city. As I moved closer, I could make out the dim bulks of buildings and walls. The dark gray sky glowed with a distant gold light and soon more thunder rolled toward and over the castle. "It's just a heat storm," I said, looking at our reflections in the dark window. I studied my face, the long, wide green eyes, the shoulder length blonde hair I brushed diligently to keep smooth. My face and long neck were clear in the window, but the reflection of the library's mess hid most of my body and the long white dress I wore. Seedle was an indistinct shape high over my left shoulder, only the light from his white hair and bare chest showing.

"You shouldn't worry," he said. "The heat of battle is no place to judge your actions." I frowned at my reflection and didn't answer. My eyes were watching the lightning move slowly from cloud to cloud. Seedle moved to my side. "Look." Little lights were blooming across the city's darkness. "The Party's celebrating."

"You'll be king soon," I acknowledged.

He sighed, so close I felt it all along my neck. I shifted my weight, not wanting to jump to accusations. Especially on the night when we should have finally achieved our peace.

"I've been fighting for this a long time," Seedle said. "Now that it's finally mine, it's hard to know..."

Thunder roared outside, shaking the window pane slightly. "Hard to know what?"

"How to celebrate."

I glanced over at a bookshelf, saw a random book and went to study it. My back wasn't entirely to him. "Victory isn't its own reward?"

"Other things than this victory matter to me."

I put the book back on the shelf. I was twenty-four and should not have been so uncertain, but I looked hesitantly over my shoulder at him.

He was much closer than I'd expected him to be. I should've kept my back to him, but I couldn't believe myself for thinking such a thing. I'd seen Seedle carry orphans across battlefields on his back. I'd seen Seedle take an arrow for me in combat. Seedle was a samurai of the highest order. Honor was his heart. So I turned to look at him.

His gaze dropped to my body for just a moment. The high priestess at our temple had told me my beauty was a gift from God and a tool of the devil. But Seedle-?

He whispered, "Salome."

I shook my head. "Seedle, I don't-"

"Don't what?"

"I don't love you."

He stopped me from moving away by placing his hand on my hip. He didn't hook his arm around me by sheer force; I could've shoved past that restraining hand easily. At the same time, I couldn't.

"Salome, you have been at my side for two years. My healer and my sorceress. For two years, you have been my strength. Your faith has never faltered and your courage never failed me. How can you say you don't love me?"

His voice was quiet, beseeching and exhorting together. But I didn't believe it. I knew I wasn't his strength, and I knew he knew it as well. But most of my attention was on his hand sliding up my stomach. I jerked away, backed up until my shoulders hit the window, and stared at him, wondering which of us had gone insane.

His eye narrowed though his voice was still relatively gentle. "Don't be afraid, Salome."

My breath caught in my throat. I held it in my teeth. I glared at him and breathed out. "Don't tell me not to be afraid."

"Salo-"

My voice was growing ragged with adrenaline. "_Don't_ tell me not to worry. And don't touch me!"

He laughed jerkily. "All these years together, and you don't trust me?"

I moved along the windowpane. "Not anymore."

His eye flashed; I could see him struggling for composure. "Salome, I love you. I would never hurt you."

I stared at him, fear and anger building in me. Suddenly I laughed like a maniac, choked it off as soon as I was able. All the same, I could feel myself smiling and the rage in my eyes as I said, "Go on. Lie again."

He always had his sword. If I'd submitted to him, he would've taken it with us into the bedroom. Now it was angled in his right hand, long and sharp and deadly as the one-eyed glare he gave me.

I was on fire. I could feel Mana roaring through my body and I thought I could see it, red flames guarding me like a wall. Too late, I realized it couldn't work.

With a pass of his left hand and a stab into my arm, Seedle cut off my contact to Mana. It was a maneuver he knew well, and the Party had often been relieved he had it during battle. I grabbed my bleeding arm, then choked as Seedle shoved his thumb deep into my windpipe. My legs gave way, and I could hardly see. I couldn't scream. I could hear and feel, and I felt Seedle slam me against the bookcase. I also felt something blunt and metallic push into my side.

While Seedle's one hand threatened to choke me and his other worked its way down the back of my dress, looking for clasps, I ran my own hand along his torso. And when I found his dagger, I wrenched it free of its scabbard and punched Seedle through the chest with it.

I felt it move through him, scrape across the breastbone. Then it hit his heart with a soft, sudden give, and the bloody hilt jerked in my hand. Seedle staggered back from me, his eye fixed on me incredulously.

"...Bitch," he whispered. I could see even now his hand was moving to his sword, where he'd dropped it on the floor.

I couldn't believe he was still standing. I wouldn't have been able to believe the absolute hatred I saw in his face but for the fact that it was in mine too. The dagger was still in his heart. I twisted it in a half circle.

He coughed, spewing blood into my eyes and mouth. Then he dropped, pulling free of the dagger as he died.

I stared down at his body; his blood was no longer spurting, just running steadily out of the ragged hole in his chest. Blood dropped off the dagger, smeared up my arm and across my front. I blinked hard, Seedle's blood still running in my eyes.

Then the door opened.

I turned too quickly. I still had trouble breathing and I slipped. Maybe it looked like the lunge of a warrior to Seedle's seconds in command as they dashed forward. The club to the back of my head came as no surprise.

The things I heard. Seedle wouldn't have touched an unwilling woman, he was bound by a code of honor. Or, what had I been thinking? The man was about to be crowned king, and I could've been his mistress. I never once heard that Seedle had as good as killed me.

I was terrified. I didn't scream and I didn't stumble as I was led to the post at the top of the mound of firewood. A man I knew -Gar, Seedle's friend, my friend- didn't look at me as he tied me to the post, cinching the ropes taut around my ribs and thighs. I was still wearing the long white dress; it beat in a fitful wind. The wind wouldn't let me die quickly.

My heart began to hammer when I saw the torches. _This isn't how it should be,_ I shouted at myself. _I shouldn't have to die for some man's sick lust!_

Gar was at the foot of the mound, his torch like a writhing, garish flower. His eyes were dull but his voice was thick with loathing. "I commend you to die for treachery. All eyes witness the death of Salome the Traitor!"

He threw his torch onto the mound. I didn't scream. The crowd surged forward, dropping their torches in twos and fives together. I didn't scream. Only when the wind stilled and the flames surged up to surround me -only when the flames were so loud they roared down all other sounds -only then did I begin to scream with rage.


	2. Chapter 2

2

But there was still fire. Even after I died.

You'll say I was dead. You'll say there's no way my body could still feel pain. That's your first mistake.

After the long darkness that burned through me after I died at the stake, I opened my eyes to dull red heat. I saw others around me, lying huddled, just waking up themselves. Farther on through the smoke I saw figures stalking.

The ground was like hardened red clay, no dust and no softness to speak of. Cautiously I lifted my head.

"Salome?" a voice said not far off, disbelievingly. "You're here now?"

I turned. "Isaachar?"

The strategist that had carried the Brave Party through its first eighteen months of conquest and succumbed to tuberculosis earlier this year sat hunched on a rock, his sloped shoulders covered in ash. His cheek was gouged, a sheaf of flesh hanging from his jaw by a thread. He looked at me with bleak pain. "Was it battle?"

"What is this place?" I asked. I knew, but I needed another to name it.

"The Underworld. Hell. Land of the Dead."

I tried to anchor myself, grip the rock floor for support. I cut my knuckles open instead and told myself that was the reason my voice was shaking. "I don't believe this..."

Isaachar sighed. "Then you're lucky."

A dark shape loomed through the flames and sulfur. In a moment the fire split and revealed a massive being, a vulture-headed demon that looked strong enough to snap my spine as easily as my neck.

What happened to me? What on earth happened to me? Suddenly I was on my feet, Mana whipping out of me in waves. The demon reacted with enviable quickness, bringing up a shield before sending his own spear of Mana shrieking towards me. I was lifted off my feet, somersaulted through the air as my arm clipped a rock ledge and landed on my shoulder some thirty feet distant.

The demon said nothing, merely glanced at the wide-eyed newcomers and walked back through the fire.

An eternity later, Isaachar was slumped next to me. "You're alive," he said, vaguely astonished.

"I...couldn't be."

I opened my eyes to see him shaking his head at me. "You think you can't die again?"

"What?"

"You think there aren't darker hells than this to go to?" He rose unsteadily to his feet. "These are the shallows."

Isaachar shambled away. After a few steps, I think he forgot he'd been talking to me; I think he forgot himself all together. He moved off, whining and moaning like a wounded dog. I rolled to a sitting position, blankly glancing at my bloody hands, the red scrapes on my arm and shoulders. Ah, it was hell. And I was still bleeding. And I could still die.

I sat there a long time, waiting for absolutely anything.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After awhile I seemed to compress all my strength into my legs and I staggered back to my feet. My first standing view of hell was not so different from the crouching ones. I could see more. Dark caverns and shallow red canyons pocked and gouged the red terrain, fires dancing almost like some infernal topiary. Humans (What were we now? Corpses?) marched along the stone ridges and battlements, carrying weapons. Hell had an army? Who was there to fight?

I walked fast to keep my legs from shaking, down the incline and towards a marching regiment. I had been a member of the Brave Party; the sight of an army frightened me far less than I expected.

As I was moving out of the smoke and into better light, I saw a woman watching the review glance up at me. She was tall and short-haired and held the largest bazooka I'd ever seen. She also had pointed ears.

"New soul?" she asked, not smiling. As I came closer, her eyebrows shot up in surprise. Then they fell again, and her face was impassive. "What you do?"

I was in hell. There wasn't much left for me. I was not going to bother with niceties. "I'm a murderer."

"Yeah, yeah," she said impatiently. "But how'd you do it?"

I matched her bored tone. "I'm a sorceress."

"Good," she clipped. "Kelshat's division lost one of those just this morning. You'll join his troop."

A wind began to beat against the hem of my dress. "I don't think so."

She fired on me just as fast as I tossed her into the air with a flare sphere. When the smoke dissipated slightly, we quickly ran our eyes over each other's bloodstains, looking for mortal wounds.

In a second she'd leveled her bazooka at me again. In another second, the vulture demon had opened his beak, grabbed her head with it, and slung her by the neck twelve feet away. He whipped around to face me, his sharp beak darting forward. Before I could move, he grabbed me by the front of the dress, shook me like a rattle and lobbed me over the heads of some passing infantry. When I landed I was unfortunately still conscious. And still in a mood. I rolled to my feet, flames surrounding my hands.

The demon spoke for the first time, with a voice that was nasal and nauseating. "You're new here. I'll cut you some slack. But in ten seconds you _won't_ be new here. Understand?"

I glared.

"That _means_," he roared, "dissolve your spell!"

The cavern shook, sending a cloud of thick red dust mixing with the smoke. Coughing hard enough to bring up some internal organs, I cut the spell.

"Do you know who I am?" the demon asked.

"You'll tell me anyway?" I simper-snarled.

"I am your_ master_. I am Aerfa, Overlord of the Underworld! King of Hell! And Dominator of the Souls of Men! Is it clear to you yet? Kelshat is over that ridge. You can acquaint yourself with him or I'll put you on the next boat to..." He paused. "To hell."

I was walking away by then. I have no clue what happened to the woman with the bazooka. During my afterlife, I've often wondered if she lived. These days, I generally don't care.

I topped the ridge and closed my eyes against the sudden, smarting heat. When I opened them again, I tried to sort out my surroundings through the rippling waves of heat and the smoke.

What? Was _this_ where the fires of hell came from?

It was a logging facility. I swear, just a heap of logs stacked pyramid-style by one of the flaming caverns. After all the horror, hell has to import trees to be hot?

"Be so good as to rid your face of that consummate contempt," said a voice. I looked to either side, wary and bewildered. "DON'T shake your head at me, young woman!" the voice persisted. "And meet me squarely in the eye, if you think you can!"

I looked down.

Oh hell.

One of the logs was talking to me.

It was this log with this mouth and limbs and little eyes, like some squirrel had nibbled them into existence.

And it too had a bazooka.

"That's better," the log said. It was a fairly big log, almost as tall as I am. Still, I wasn't surprised I missed it, considering all the logs there were in this pit. It puffed out a non-existent chest. "What is your business with Commander Kelshat?"

I found myself imagining what it would be like to kick the thing. Just to see what would happen. You see the effect hell was having on me. "I'm joining his division."

"You're not a log. You're not a stick. Your figure's damn nice if you catch what I'm saying."

"You _are_ a log," I said back, having got a bit touchy on the subject. "Why do you care?"

The log shuffled its feet (branches?) a moment, then seemed to recall itself. It drew itself up proudly. "Who sent you?"

"Aerfa, Overlord of the Underworld."

"King of Hell?"

"Dominator of the Souls of Men."

"Ah. Well. There's no arguing with him."

"That's defeatist."

He gave me a long-suffering look. "I'm a _log_."

I sighed impatiently. "I'd prefer joining the division to just talking like this."

The popsicle stick cleared its throat, thumped its (non-existent) chest, and said, "_I_ am Commander Kelshat. How would I benefit from having an argumentative hussy in my division?"

"I doubt Aerfa thinks you have a choice in the matter."

Kelshat sighed wearily, undoubtedly seeing the truth of that. "Can you do magic?"

I shrugged, as if uncomfortable. "Only a little."

"Okay, you're in." He turned around and hollered, "Someone find me a spare bazooka!" The pyramid of logs suddenly tumbled out of existence; they picked themselves up on their spindly legs and went tottering off, bazookas tucked under their elbows.

Kelshat was tromping down the side of the pit. I followed, for something to do. I had a vague notion of acquiring information, knowledge being power and all, but I had no real plan. "I heard you lost your mage this morning. Who're we fighting?"

He shrugged. "Basically anyone who shows up."

"Who shows up?"

"People who'd like to conquer hell."

"And those discerning souls would be...?"

"Hot-shot demons and Overlords with spare time."

"I thought Aerfa was the Overlord."

"Of hell, yeah. But the other Netherworlds in the universe? Nuh, not him."

"Are you saying I've just died and landed on the margins of a cosmic power struggle?"

"That's a very poetic way of putting it."

"Who were you fighting this morning?"

"King Drake the Second and a Half. Didn't do too well, but he managed to wipe out half my battalion."

"You're _logs_."

"As if to say, 'Who really cares!'" he demanded.

Well yeah, but I didn't really have the heart for it anymore. After all, the log had feelings too. Still, I couldn't see any advantage to being the battle-mage in a division of bazooka-toting splinters.

A rocker-launcher was suddenly clapped into my hands. I stared down at it dubiously. Its entire left side was rippled with dents and the handle had a bright orange sticker that read THE ONE SAVES.

"Okay," Kelshat said. "You're a mage but you never know what'll happen. Lemme show you how to use -"

"WE'RE UNDER ATTAAAACK!" a voice BOOMED across the Underworld.

And then, following quite quickly, "WATCH OUT FOR THE HELL-KITTIES!"

And then. "OHMYGOSH IT'S-" And then there was a loud squish sound that resounded through hell.

And then Kelshat said, "Battle logs to the front!"

"Why the _front_?" I demanded as I was hustled up out of the pit and across to (what I guessed were) the front gates of Hades. "Why not the right wing? Keep the right wing strong!"

"WE GO DOWN IN FLAMES OF GLORY!" Kelshat bellowed. And then -what do you know- he was wrong. He didn't go down in flames. There was a blast of Mana and he went up in flames, flying over all our heads like a firework. Kind of pretty, in its own way.

Meanwhile, there was a solid line of sword-swingers bearing down on me and the logs. I whacked one with my bazooka -nearly broke my arm in the process- just dropped the bazooka- and darted to the rear of the line. After all, I was a_ mage._ Meanwhile the first wave of the defensive line was quickly being reduced to sawdust.

Yes. I just started running. Forget my Mana power. I'd seen how it compared to Aerfa's, and if there was more than one demon here, I wanted to be emphatically elsewhere.

However, I ran nearly into Aerfa's open arms. He was holding two archers by the necks and swinging his arms like a windmill, but when he saw me, his eyes lit up, and he dropped them. "You! Mana-woman! You're with me!"

And see, it does you no good when you impress the Dominator of the Souls of Men, and he send his division right into the heart of battle.

I kept looking for a way to dodge out but there was simply no break; soldiers were crashing all around me, skin and steel barricades probably a mile thick. I (somehow) sensed when our own division entered combat. Aerfa gestured me to the back. I retreated just out of the striking distance of two brawling slimes and tried to compose myself for a giga fire, the highest spell I knew.

I sort of lost my concentration when Aerfa's front line exploded in a fan of red sparks. As they sailed over our heads, I saw that the letter Z had been slashed into all of their foreheads.

"Damn you, Zetta!" Aerfa bellowed (which struck me as a pretty complimentary thing to say to a demon who was trying to take over the Underworld, but then, I was still trying to get off a decent giga fire.) The Mana around my hands popped and few times and fizzed.

There was a blinding red light from the far end of the field and a male warrior barreled into me. This one, I noticed as he tried to get up, was still alive and had a Z on the tip of his nose. Aerfa was screaming. I looked around, wondering if he was being violently eviscerated but no, he was running back into hell (did he have some sort of citadel?) and squalling, "Attack, ATTACK!"

I found myself shrieking, "He's leaving us?"

"Smart bird," the warrior grunted.

"Hyaaaa ha ha ha!" came from the far end of the field. About six prinnies and a drill machine did a loop-de-loop through the air.

_I'm going to die!_ I realized. _There are darker hells than this, and I'm going to see them!_

"_I am not going to die twice in one day!_" I shouted at the warrior. He gave me a slightly cross-eyed look, shrugged, and lumbered back towards the battle. As I hoisted myself to my feet, Aerfa's squadron of Valkyries were crawling away on their hands and knees. A tall figure in black made a single pass with his right hand, and the women simply popped out of existence. The male warrior was charging. The black figure drew a long sword, dashed forward, punted the warrior in the chest and lopped off his head. Impressive, not encouraging.

I'm happy to report that my giga fire showed up then. It wheezed towards the black figure, puffed a bit, and went dead. At first I thought I'd set the man's head on fire -then I realized, no, his hair had already been on fire, and maybe it was actually intentional.


	3. Chapter 3

3

"Hyaaaaa ha ha ha! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I knew exactly what I was doing. I was staring. I don't know why he couldn't figure that out.

You'll excuse me because I'd never seen someone without pupils in his eyes -not that pupils seemed to be an issue considering the fact that his eyes were two blazing points of light, white-hot. Those eyes were ringed by stark black tattoos, black around both eyes, inked black eyebrows with a single line slashed vertically down both upper and lower lids.

And then there was a surge of fire coming towards me. I ducked. When I came back up, he'd changed position, circled around to my left with the sword ready. Stupidly, I looked to see if his next move was betrayed in his face. Instead I noticed his face was long and narrow with a thin-bladed nose and a sharply-cut jaw. His ears were huge, long and pointed. All that under the heaps of burning red hair. Next move? Well, he was smiling with some sort of manic, predatory glee and showing his little fangs to good advantage.

He jumped forward. I couldn't duck, I had to fall flat out on the ground. He went over me, his swordpoint coming down less than an inch from my side. I snapped around in a roll. He jumped over me again, and I rolled right up to the black toe of his boot. I looked up.

That grin was beaming down at me like a crescent moon. Eyes like meteors. Given the nature of his hair, I think it's just as well his eyebrows weren't real.

He stared down at me, about six feet of black leather pants and open-fronted black leather jacket and chains and cape around a lanky body of wiry muscle. He traced his swordpoint across my bare arm in idle swirls, not drawing blood. "So... the last of Aerfa's platoon. Anything to say before you die? Remember, you're representing your entire battalion."

I thought I should make one thing clear before I went to some darker hell. "I'm not a member of Aerfa's platoon."

"Just as well," he said easily, lifting the sword away from my arm and to a level with his chest. I'd seen that move before. He was going to stab me to death, not decapitate.

I'd felt too despairing to speak at my last death (just this morning), and this time I felt I really deserved to explain myself. "I'm not a member of this army."

"Awfully nice of you to attack me for them. Damn pathetic attack, by the way."

"I was forced into his army."

"Happens to every human eventually."

Mana surged out of me. I saw his eyes blaze with rage and his sword shot down. I rolled closer to him, hitting him in the shins. My spell still whipped out, arcing around the demon to hit the archer that had leveled an arrow at his back. A second time, the swordpoint missed me. The archer screamed as she died. The demon glanced over his shoulder, nodded, then swooped down and grabbed me by the throat. He swung me up. My hands scrabbled at my neck, the way a strangulation victim's hands always do.

"That was interesting. Explain your bleeding heart this time. You want to give me every chance to kill you?"

"No," I rasped.

He shook his head. "You're not very logical."

"I am." I gasped, trying to find the breath for one last statement. "I wanted... to choose my master this time."

I was blacking out by then, but I think I saw the demon glance over his shoulder again at the archer's liquefied body. It had already begun to curdle.

He dropped me. I landed hard on my knees, gasping for breath and holding my bruised throat. I realized his swordpoint was to my cheek. It moved quickly, sketching out the shape of a Z, but drew no blood.

"All right," he said, quite cheerfully. "Having a member of Aerfa's platoon will be a nice thing to remind him of before our next battle." I was too happy to be breathing to say anything to that. In another second, the demon dashed past me. I heard a "Hyaaaa ha ha ha!", a liquidy gargle, and something hit the ground.

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Were _all_ the Netherworlds dim, red, smoky and topped by towering, twisting black citadels that defied all the norms of architecture?

That's what they had told me this was. Not another hell, a Netherworld. When I'd asked if it was hell, the woman I'd been talking to narrowed her eyes in disgust.

"_No_," she spat. "We don't get that dead human trash here. Or..." She grimaced, showing fangs. "We're not _supposed_ to." So that's how I learned that everyone who was sharing the barracks with me was a demon.

There were about fifty of them in this barrack, swordsmen, Valkyries, witches and healers and gunners. No helpful logs. The barracks were pretty spacious, racks upon racks of stone beds meant to accommodate a hoard of about two hundred. I'd noticed at least six other barracks like it.

What else had I noticed as I and the real soldiers had gone hurtling home to this place? Vast expanses of blighted farmland with scraggly black three-horned cyclopean sheep. The industrial center spread out from the citadel, factories (puffing gray smoke), mills (puffing grayer smoke) prison compounds (puffing orange smoke). And these huge barracks with their huge training compounds.

"You'll do okay here," Kogo, an archer demon, said, leaning over her bunk down towards mine.

"You think so?" I asked dubiously.

"Yeah. All you'll have to do is stand still during our training sessions while we perfect our aim."

I stared at her.

She smiled. "Lord Zetta likes us all to be accurate. Do you twitch much?"

My hands were twitching a bit, giving off small flares of Mana. I shifted so I was sitting on them.

There was a commotion towards the door as a merchant came tromping in. "Hey! I got the new shipment of Hero's Blood!"

"Yeah!" Oliver the thief hooted. "Anyone wanna join me for a drink?"

I went for a stroll. It wasn't as oppressively hot here in Zetta's Netherworld, but the lighting was not much better. Except for the occasional sulfurous flash that engulfed the citadel, everything was cast in a hazy red light from the lurid, red orange sky. The sun...or moon, I'm not sure which... was a swollen white ball you could look at with minimal discomfort.

I crossed the compound, dodged around two succubi that were deep into a hissy-fit and found myself face to face with one of those sheep. It was just clopping along, a sprig of deadly nightshade between its fangs. It blinked its red eye at me and bnaaaaa'd derisively.

I knew. No place for a human.

I looked up at the sky again, the tumultuous clouds that spun and tore constantly in a non-existent wind. Still staring straight up, I turned until I could see the highest spire of the citadel, a thin black needle poking the white sun. Like a... black tattoo against a white eye?

Here I was, a human, one of Aerfa's puppets, where I apparently had no place to be. _What am I going to do with what I've accomplished?_

You see, I'd already decided I was going to do something with my stolen life.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

But it had already been decided what I was going to do with my stolen life.

I stared across the compound at point-blank range to Kogo. She was leveling a rifle at me and the iron pillar to which I'd been forcibly strapped. "Whose idea was this?" I'd demanded as they'd pulled the ropes around me (apparently, I'm the sort of woman who looks good with ropes around her).

"Q's," Oliver had told me. "Platoon leader."

Great. So I'd been saved from the fires of hell to be a target for a novice demon gunner.

She fired. The pillar shook, and I glanced past the edge of my right eye at the impact hole in the iron.

"Damn!" Kogo spat and reloaded. "I'll get her head this time, I swear."

The pillar was vibrating again, but not from a bullet. I wasn't sure if they could see it, but I could _feel_ it, humming all through my spine. I waited until Kogo had angled the rifle back onto her shoulder, and then I gave her a long-distance punch to the face with a fireball.

Valeria and Sarah, two Valkyries, and Oliver were the only others around. Three witnesses too many, I thought to myself. Not that I imagined this episode would stay particularly quiet...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It should've been a good feeling. I'd knocked out four demons with two spells, a fire and a giga fire. There they lay, the vanquished, sprawled and tumbled and smoking gently. They'd been absolutely defenseless against the force of my Mana.

Now why couldn't I get these _damn_ ropes untied?

I pulled, I tugged, I twisted. I wrenched my body from left to right. I braced my feet on the pillar and tried to push my way out of the ropes. I spent about an hour struggling to target a fire spell that would burn the ropes but not kill me in the process. I scooted around as far as I could; I managed to go a full circle around the pillar but I couldn't break loose. There didn't seem to be any knots anywhere...

About two hours later, I was horizontal in my bindings. I'd thought maybe if I could part the ropes with my _foot_, they'd loosen and I'd just be able to ooze out from under them. My foot had gotten stuck. I'd tried to work it free with my other foot. My other foot got stuck. I arranged myself in the ropes and tried to get comfortable.

"_What_ happened here?" a harsh voice growled. I craned my neck around. Ah, Lord Zetta. My new master. About as likely to be merciful in this predicament as he was to start speaking in tongues. I didn't say anything, just tried to lounge back in my ropes and look as if this was all part of the plan of a dangerous individual who was a force to be reckoned with.

"You've destroyed four of my best fighters!" he shouted, voice caustic with rage.

"Yes!" I shot back, trying to sound confident. "I did!"

He slowly trained his gaze away from Oliver's smoldering form around to me. "What the hell are you trying to pull? Did you beg for mercy just to try and pull some pathetic coup?"

"Isn't -" I wriggled a bit, trying to get my weight off my left hand which was smarting for lack of blood circulation. "Isn't treachery a motive understood by demons?"  
"Some nerve. What're you trying to do now?" He watched me twitch, left eyebrow quirked in slight bemusement.

"I'm trying-" I slipped hard. My shoulders shot through two ropes, and now I was more or less at a seventy-five degree angle, head down. I sighed impatiently and decided to give up. "I _wasn't_ trying to pull a coup. They'd strapped me up for target practice, and I wanted to give them a taste from the other end of the field!"

He didn't look shocked or indignant. He glanced contemplatively at Valeria, whose face was frozen in an expression of absolute bewilderment. "Were you fighting to kill?"

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

He snorted. "Giga level the highest you know?"

I looked at him in surprise. "There are higher levels?"

He laughed shortly. "Not for you, there aren't. In fact, maybe for you there isn't going to be much more of anything."

I braced and narrowed my eyes at him. "What are you going to do with me?"

He crossed his arms. "Do you think you can handle torture?"

"Yes," I said, not about to hesitate.

"Good," he said. "We'll take it a step up from there."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I really wanted to be back in those ropes.

No, no._ No._ This wasn't that bad. It was just my overheated mind making it _seem_ That Bad.

It wasn't even completely dark, I told myself. Of course, that made me aware of every last shadow, particularly that glowering black shadow at the far end...

I swung my body a bit, which was a mistake, because I had no way to stop swinging until inertia got bored with me. I glanced far up at the ceiling, up where my wrists were, trapped in a large shackle that nulled my Mana power, attached to a thick chain in the dungeon's roof. Then I looked down at the floor. It wasn't very far, only a foot or so beyond my toes. In the soft light that fell from the grate in the ceiling (how nice to be able to breathe) I could see the stone floor. I looked up above my head. On a level with my wrists, a shelf jutted out from the wall. Something was on the shelf, but I couldn't tell what.

And that shadow in the corner...

It was pitch black, as least as tall as I was and about twelve feet wide. And I was deluding myself. It wasn't a shadow.

It was a hole.

The sort of hole large eyes shine out of.

Now I was regretting not having asked more questions as the demon Overlord unslung me from the pillar and dragged me off to this dungeon. It was like when I'd died at the stake (still this morning, about sixteen hours or so ago); I didn't want to talk. I wanted to go down with my silence as a testimony to my dignity. A lot of good that sort of thing does you in a Netherworld.

Lord Zetta had not laughed as he'd levitated me to the ceiling, then magically clapped the iron into place with a snap of his fingers. "I'll sort out what's left of you in the morning," he'd assured me as he'd strode out, slamming the door behind him. I could still see that door. I don't think it was even locked.

I was seething. _Seedle._ I'd served two years as his loyal healer and battle mage. Now I was damned. And Seedle, he'd tried to rape me as some sort of celebration. And now he was damned. And I'd died for trying to save myself. And I was damned. And I'd saved my new master's life, and I was still damned and-

Rustle.

I stopped seething, washed icy cold in fear. I stared through the dark, my dilated eyes fairly useless. Through the faint light, in that hole, I saw...

Eyes.

Two small glittering eyes.

Then two more.

Then ten more.

My arms jerked, my Mana fighting to vent itself. The shackle buzzed angrily.

There were about sixty eyes now.

And suddenly they were rushing towards me. Scraping and chittering and-

Squirrels.

I stopped thrashing. A tide of squirrels was rushing towards me across the dark floor, fuzzy tails bobbing and eyes gleaming. _What?_ I wondered. _What step up from torture-_

The front line of squirrels gathered itself and jumped at me.

Yes. I screamed. I screamed like I was being ripped open and eaten alive. Because those squirrels were swarming all over me, little nails biting through the thin fabric of my dress and pricking my knees, my thighs, my stomach, my shoulders, a chattering, smelly tide of furriness rushing up onto my head, nails and tails smacking my eyelids, slipping into my mouth, up my nose, in my hair and jumping to that shelf and then-

As one fleet of squirrels was bounding up my body, a hail of sunflower seeds commenced smacking me on the head. Most of them got stuck in my hair. Suddenly, some of the squirrels didn't bother to hop off of me, they just plunked their fuzzy bums down on my head and started scrabbling for seeds across my scalp and shoulders and seeds were going down the front of my dress and one squirrel was clicking his incisors in my ear and I was flailing around, twisting back and forth, trying to throw those squirrels off but they jumped right back up and

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I woke up as he was letting me down. My wrists were suddenly released from the metal grip, and I was drifting slowly downwards. I landed in a sitting position and opened my eyes.

There was not a single sunflower seed anywhere, not a trace. There weren't any squirrels left either but there were quite a few traces, mostly on me. I stared blankly at the thin red scratches that covered me like a fishnet bodysuit. My white dress was bravely holding itself together, but only just. I blinked and looked up, exhausted and angry. "I'm not going to be the target for your demons."

His hair cast a lurid red light around him in the darkness, eyes blazing out. "You think you can tell _me_ that?"

"I saved your _life_."

His eyes narrowed into sharp slits. "I was not about to die there."

"Then why..." But I was too smart to ask why he hadn't just killed me. If he wanted to be benevolent, by all means, let the demon Overlord be benevolent. I held my forehead. I hadn't come here to be killed during a training session. But I had no leverage in this power play, and in each hour or so in this afterlife, it seemed I was close to dying a second time. I wanted to accomplish something, for once. I no longer credited my years in the Brave Party as worthwhile. All they'd done was utilize skills I already knew and taught me to hate myself for killing others.

Except Seedle. I doubted I'd ever hate killing him.

But here, I'd hit another dead-end. I wondered what the darker hells would be like.

"You'll find a healer in your barracks," Lord Zetta was saying. "Get up."

I got up, pain scurrying across me like even more squirrels. "What sort of monster are you?" I asked, not even very passionately. Just sort of deadpanned.

"A badass one," he informed me. "Glad you asked."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The healer was named Raia, a willowy blonde demon who looked like she was about to walk out of the front of her gown -if her gown had been loose enough to move in. She healed me without even opening her eyes, and I trudged back into the barracks, no longer bleeding but wondering where I was going to find some sturdier clothes. I also wanted to know who/what Q was, what he/she/it looked like, and if he/she/it had any especial weakness against fire.

I walked in and found most of the demons I was familiar with huddled around a slice of cheesecake. They all glanced up when I came in, then immediately focused their attention back on the dessert. _Sweets must be hard to come by in the Netherworld. Why aren't they fighting over it?_

I decided to take a firm stance. I put my hands on my hips. "Where's Q?"

Sam, a fairly pathetic soldier, sniffed. "She-" He took a breath, gathering himself. "She's dead."

I looked blank.

"Lord Zetta killed her. Punted her up in the air and impaled her on his sword."

That gave me a bit of a jump. "Why?"

"He said he doesn't want your Mana to go to waste," Rem spoke up then, a stoic infantrywoman.

"If- if-" Sam gulped, "Lord Zetta says that if we're good, he'll reincarnate her tonight, so -so -so we found the best slice of cheesecake for Q to be reincarnated with."

"Q's going to come back as a cheesecake?"

"No," Kogo snapped, coming up behind me. I whirled around. She had dark, sleepless rings under her eyes that hadn't been there yesterday. "Lord Zetta will use the cheesecake as a focus to bring her back. It's a good, quality cheesecake, so Q should come back more powerful than before."

I stared, amazed at them. "Lord Zetta can just bring people back to life?"

Rem shrugged. "Not just anyone. Just us low-level flunky demons that are under contract to him. His vassals. Only Overlords can do it. Don't be impressed, it doesn't take much out of them."

"Yeah," Ilyxiveth, a sword mistress who actually favored using spears said then. "In fact, Lord Zetta periodically kills us off and reincarnates us at higher levels."

I chewed the inside of my mouth. "I'm guessing this sort of process wouldn't work with a human."

Oliver popped open another bottle of Hero's Blood. "Nup. Just us flunkies."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Q turned out to be a blonde, short-haired professor with a long black jacket, glasses and narrow, heartless eyes. She said, "_Splen_did," after Lord Zetta reincarnated her and wiped some residual strawberry syrup off her shoulder. "So what am I supposed to do with the human, if not shoot her?"

"What you'd do with any other witch," Zetta answered. "Now gear up, all of you. I've got an appointment with Alex."

After Lord Zetta left, Q clipped my shoulder with hers and punched me lightly in the middle. "Witch, huh? Talk to Luvenya about getting a book." She punched me lightly again and moved off before I could break her wrist. I stalked off to where Luvenya the demon merchant was sitting in her bunk.

She looked up at me out of her smart, bespectacled eyes. "Need a weapon?"

"Q says I should have a book."

Luvenya started digging through the pack at the foot of her bed. "Here. This is the Gospel of Thomas Jefferson. Suit you?"

I took the book. It was fairly hefty and gave off the distinctive scent of brimstone and eighteenth-century wig powder. I flipped the pages and fire danced across them. "I guess."

I gravitated a bit towards Rem, who at least had been willing to talk to me but who hadn't been present at the shooting range yesterday. "Who's Alex?"

She rested her gun against her bare shoulder and rested her shoulder against the barrack wall. "Alexander, God of Destruction. A real hot-shot Overlord, been fighting with Zetta for centuries."

"Tough?"

"He's not the God of Creative Energies."

"So... where are we in this mess?"

She gave me an impatient look. "Huh?"

"Just how powerful is Lord Zetta? Compared to the other Overlords."

"Securely in the middle. I mean, the competition varies. King Drake the Second and a Half is pathetic on his good days. Babylon apparently used to be this Mana powerhouse, but ask anyone if they remember it. Valvoga... they say it's powerful, but I'm really not sure. And Alex's still on the up-and-coming, though he's got some devastating moves. Then there's the leading line of Overlords: Aerfa, Overlord of the Underworld; Sashenka, Queen of Perdition; Humbaba, Lord of Fear; and, of course, there's Sufferoth."

"Lord Zetta sent Aerfa running just yesterday."

"Yeah." She grinned, looking truly pleased and showing her fangs. "Maybe we're getting somewhere."

"You think so?"

"Lord Zetta's ambitious. All of his family is, but he's the worst. If he had the power to back up his dreams, there'd be no standing against him."

"All right, people!" Q barked. Rem and I turned to see her stalking down the length of the barracks, using her rifle to wing any demons still in bed. "Get in the tents, all of you!"

I followed Rem out into the compound. Three olive-green, badly-constructed tents waited outside, each emblazoned with a horned skull and crossbones. I tried not to stare too dubiously as one by one the warriors ducked inside. Being a weak little human, I followed Rem.

It was...fairly...cramped. There were eight of us inside, and I ended up sitting in the lap of Hai, the cook. He smiled charmingly at me. "Hey. I don't mind humans."

"That's nice."

"Most demons don't have curves like yours."

I scrambled away from him and ended up wedged in one of the tent's corners, my chin locked over Rem's shoulder. She took it fairly patiently. I sat there, waiting for something to happen.

After about thirty seconds of watching everyone grunt and shift as a wimpy wind beat the edges of the tent, I asked, "What happens now?"

And suddenly, I could feel the tent plummeting down through the air, spinning as it went. Don't ask me how it worked. There was no bottom to the tent, and looking down I could see a field of land spiraling closer and closer as we approached. When had we gone airborne? How was the tent keeping up with us? Why wasn't anyone else panicking? What was going to happen when we impacted which looked like it was about to happen in about four sec

CRASH.

Oh wow. That didn't hurt a bit.

"Just wait til you're called out," Rem said, preempting my next question.

"Rem!" we all heard Lord Zetta shout from the outside world beyond the tent. "Mel! Mesmer!" Rem went shooting out the tent, rifle cocked. Mel and Mesmer, two witches I had difficulty telling apart, must have been in either of the other tents.

I heard a strange voice, a young man's shouting, "This is _it_, Zetta! You shall be my stepping stone to greatness!"

"Alex! I'd rather be your kidney stone!" we heard Lord Zetta shout back.

"Yeah, yeah...all things pass."

There was the sound of a loud, air-shaking explosion and bright red light seared through the tent flaps. "Hyaaaaa ha ha ha! Get ready for your daily dose of Vitamin Z!"  
Lots of battle sounds ensued, gunfire and steel and explosions. Then Valeria and Sarah were summoned out, followed by Ilyxiveth and Q and Human-girl-witch-person.

I trotted warily out the tent. The battle spread all around me, spells and shells and bullets shooting against the heavy black sky. I heard the violent roar of a drill and opened my book in its face. The words _And Jesus spake unto the Apostles, "No, I am not God."_ shot out and hit the drill head on. It shattered, sending its driver somersaulting into the air. He landed on his feet, a bushido master with bright green hair and an alarming sword. I got a pretty good look at him as I sent him back up in the air with a flare sphere. He paid me back by grabbing my book, jumping on it, then clubbing me across the forehead with his sword. I reeled and came back with a giga fire. Then I ran to the far end of the field.

It was pretty simple to locate the battling Overlords. Alexander, God of Destruction, proved to be a young (?) demon with spiky blue-green hair and incredibly thick blue-green eyebrows. He and Lord Zetta were locked in combat, alternating on the ground or in midair. It was hard to see who winning due to the largely unnecessary light flashes and fire surges.

"Hey!" Q shouted. "Back into battle!" Zetta, having got a bit of a breather in his duel, glanced over at me and bolstered my confidence with a livid glare.

Arrgh. You call me Human-girl-witch-person and you want me to_ die_ for you? I picked my next target, an enemy professor who looked pleasantly similar to Q. I took her down with a giga fire. About then, I noticed that one of the enemy witches had been edging up to me, her hands raised with Mana light. Just as I fully noticed her, she cast her spell.

Thus did I learn first hand that there are indeed higher level spells than giga.

I wrenched myself off of the ground, afraid the fire-spell had soldered my skin to the rock. I hardly had any strength left. She was giggling. Easy for her to giggle in battle -she could be reincarnated! She was laughing at me while she robbed me of life.

I felt an immense power building in me. I felt the high-level spell that was forming in me, but had no clue how to push its way out. I didn't know the chants, I didn't know the passes, my body didn't know if it could handle anything higher than a giga. The powerful Mana surged through me, then hit the stone wall of my own ineptitude. As much as I wanted to cast, I didn't know how, and the Mana seemed to punch holes through my body. I couldn't believe something so much more powerful than myself could exist inside of me and somehow not be able to force its way out. I slumped forward onto my hands, shaking with pain and the fear that I was going to burst open.

I heard Alex's laughter ringing across the battlefield. "HahaHAA, Zetta! Once again the scales have tipped in my favor!"

"At least be _original_ when you gloat, you damned-"

"Zetta -please say it! Say, 'This isn't over yet, Alejandro! Someday, somehow, I will-'"

"I will _not_ be a part of your little sicko fantasies!"

"Don't be bitter just because -YOU LOST!"

"Troops retreat!" Zetta hollered in a grating shout. Suddenly I was jerked to my feet and running headlong towards the tent, as if it were exerting some overwhelming magnetic force. Which I suppose it was. I went running, and the Mana spell lessened and ceased hurting, and I dived headlong into the tent and ended up with my head in Hai's stomach.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was quiet in the barracks. Sam was sitting in the front door, waiting for Q to return from her meeting with Lord Zetta. We could all hear the explosions emanating from the palace.

"It's never fun when your Overlord loses," Ilyxiveth said, which struck me as fairly obvious. She glanced over at me and explained, before I could even look confused, "Vassals stay with their Overlords. We're not strong enough to fight it."

"What's happening to Q?" I asked, hoping it involved squirrels. Rabid squirrels.

"She's reviewing the battle with Lord Zetta," Sam said faintly. "If he thinks we lost because of her, he'll..." His voice trailed off miserably. I gathered that being reincarnated was not a given.

"Huh!" Kogo laughed unpleasantly. "If he thinks we lost because of anyone else, he'll kill anyone he thinks deserves it."

I buried my face in my pillow, thinking of my battle against the witch. It was about time I got used to death threats on the hour.

I'd just sunk into uneasy sleep when I heard Q shouting for the human-girl-witch-person-THING to wake up. I whirled out of bed, fist first. She grabbed my fist and used it to sling me against the stone barrack opposite to my own. Its occupant, Sgt. Bob, snorted and rolled over.

Q's teeth were bared with rage. "Lord Zetta wants you."

I wondered if maybe I should kill myself on the way to the palace. Maybe convince Q to find it in her black, shriveled heart to kill me. "Why?" was all I asked.

"I told him_ all_ about your little battles today. _Come on._" She dragged me out of the barracks into the dark Netherworld night. I almost stopped walking, overwhelmed by the sky of shifting red clouds against black, star-speared darkness. The moon (sun) hung cold and empty of any haze or vapor. It was really, in the strangest way, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

Except for the light cast from torches, it would've been impossible to make out the black bulk of the palace. When I was dragged inside however, the black outside gave way to a ghastly red interior. Everything was either red, orange, white or black. Q hauled me across the foyer where the floor was a mosaic made to look like flames and blood, up the central staircase, past a twenty-foot high portrait of Zetta himself, through a gallery, up a thick, furry carpet that covered steep stairs that, I swear, were breathing, across a landing where I looked down into a courtyard and saw a blue baby dragon batting an enormous ball of steel wool, down a hallway with a tapestry depicting a horde of warhorses trampling their knights to a bloody and chewy death, and to a set of tall, obsidian doors that had, instead of doorknobs, round little mouths full of sharp teeth.

Q sighed impatiently and rapped her knuckles on the door while the little mouths yammered unintelligibly.

The doors opened so suddenly we were both knocked off our feet, landing several yards back down the hall.

Maybe it was my only chance to escape, but I got up, and made sure that _I _walked inside first, Q behind. I wasn't going to end this life on my knees.

If I could still stand before I died.

Lord Zetta was walking into this quaint little receiving chamber from a balcony. There wasn't a fireplace, just a round hole in the center of the floor through which flames shot twelve feet high. Curving, twisting windows let in the night. There were more tapestries and paintings, all splattered with blood. Not red paint. Blood.

"You can go, Q," Lord Zetta said shortly, face tight. Q's shoulders slumped slightly, but she turned and left. The doors slammed shut behind me and laughed delightedly.

Lord Zetta was watching me, hands on hips. Let him watch, I told myself, steady, assured and impassive as sweat trickled down my spine. I hadn't seen him this angry yet.

"So. What am I supposed to do with you?"

I didn't answer.

"You can't cast high-level Mana. You can't fight with a weapon. What place do you have in my army?"

I didn't answer.

"_Answer me_, you damned human trash."

"No place, I suppose."

And then he stared at me again, almost for a full minute. Maybe I'd never seen him this angry before, but his rage wasn't of the white-hot variety. This seemed to run deeper, permeate every breath and heartbeat.

Suddenly Lord Zetta's right hand shot out and flared with white light. I braced. Both of us were watching his hand. The light pulsed steadily, then he lowered his hand, and it went out. He was staring at me again, hard.

"Do you have any clue what I just did?"

"No," I said truthfully, though I had a shuddering suspicion that he'd been probing me.

"You humans don't know much. What good is your Mana power when you're too dumb to use it?"

I bit the inside of my lip. I really want him to just kill me, all right?

"I lost my battle because of inefficient soldiers like _you_."

"Then-" I took a deep breath. "You shouldn't have recruited me.  
He began pacing rapidly, stopped abruptly, turned and was looking at me _again_.

"What?" I demanded. "Stop wasting my time! Stop dragging this out!"

He smiled. Perhaps it was only to show that he always had the upper hand, because he certainly didn't look pleased. The smile was gone very quickly, replaced with a sort of grim efficiency. His fist came up, glowing with red light. "All right then."

"Wait!" My dignity was gone, and I'd almost screamed. My Mana was roaring inside of me again, that powerful force that was struggling to get out. I tumbled to my knees, unable to contain the power and equally unable to release it.

Lord Zetta had stopped short. After a moment I heard him say, "Stop fighting it. The spell can't be released without your consent, but your struggle is keeping it alive. Stop."

Maybe he was just getting me in an easier position to be obliterated, but I followed his advice. The pain diminished, not immediately but swiftly enough that I realized he'd been right. I looked up.

His eyes were narrowed. "A human," he said. I raised my eyebrows and waited for a bit. He spoke up suddenly. "You're my vassal, do you understand that? You follow my commands and no one else's. You exist to serve me."

"Yes," I answered, wondering what he was getting at. I knew he was lying. Only demons were committed as vassals. Humans, well, we were dead. If an Overlord doesn't like us, he just send us off with a quick swordblow.

"You need training," he was saying, "Like a dog. Like any other soldier."

"Yes," I answered, still in that same frame of mind. "Are you -do you want Mesmer to teach me?"

"No," he said quickly and seemed to leave it that. Then, after about three heartbeats, he said, "I'll train you."

I really raised my eyebrows.

"An imbecile like you is a special case."

I snorted. "If I were an imbecile, you would've tossed me to that cute blue dragon of yours. No-" I began to shake slightly. Was he saying I was powerful enough to be taught by him alone?

"Get up," he said contemptuously. "Your power isn't bad for a human's. But Mesmer or Mel would ruin what little usefulness you have."

I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it at all. I was struggling not to smile in triumph. My eyes were gleaming at this dangerous creature that was going to make me powerful.

Then I stepped back from myself and demanded, _What the hell are you thinking?_

_You're just a human._

_You can die so easily._


	4. Chapter 4

4

At least I was sleeping in a bed again. That was wonderful. Since I'd joined the Brave Party two years, a lifetime ago, beds had been intermittent and treated as sacrosanct. But even my bed in the Sacred Confine hadn't been half so big, or so soft or had such luxuriant blankets.

Of course, my bed at the Sacred Confine hadn't been home to about sixty bats either.

When I'd been conducted to my new apartments last night, Acantha, the healer-demon Lord Zetta had assigned to me, had gestured me in without any preamble. I'd walked hesitantly inside, my feet sinking into the deep, gore-red carpet, my eyes taking in the black wardrobe, the black dresser, the black table and chairs, the black bookcase and the gigantic black bed with its bright orange bed curtains. I'd immediately walked out into the spacious balcony the room opened into. Gripping the stone railing, I looked down probably a thousand feet at the indistinct shadows below, punctuated by hazy lamplight and smog. Looking up, I seemed almost high enough to touch the cold, dead moon.

"There should be some things in the wardrobe," Acantha monotoned, eyes closed. "Will that be all?"

Some sixth sense brought me over to that bed. I pulled aside one of the curtains and looked down in pleased surprise at the soft bedding. Then I looked up.

At first I thought the bed's canopy had been decorated with stalactites. But then the stalactites opened their eyes.

"_What?"_

"Is there a problem?"

"Those are-"

She sniffed derisively. "They're not _vampire_ bats."

But the bats were okay. They flapped out as soon as I crawled into bed. I slept with the curtain open, and by the time I awoke, they were all back, wrapped snugly in their wings, the round tops of their heads hanging down towards me.

What was a problem was my wardrobe. That first morning I opened the wardrobe doors, expecting to be capsized by a tide of bats and moths. Nothing happened. So I reached in and withdrew a long red dress.

Thirty minutes later, Acantha glided in, bearing a covered tray. I glanced up from the heaps of slinky dresses I'd thrown around the floor, searching for _something_ that covered my hips, and watched her set the tray on my table. "Brekkers." She slithered out.

I decided to leave getting dressed until after breakfast. I got up, glanced at the morning view beyond my balcony (swirly; orange), sat down and lifted the lid.

It was a bowl, some milk, and a box of cereal. Scorn Flakes.

I wasn't going to complain.

After breakfast, I went back to work on getting dressed. I eventually resigned myself to the black skirt that was actually red in some lights (it didn't slit to the hip, just three-quarters up the thigh), the opaque black stockings (like it diminished the effect), the white top (it was cropped but...my stomach did look good) and was just finishing lacing up some boots when I happened to glance at myself in the wardrobe mirror.

I stared at myself.

I had been on the floor. I crawled across the floor towards my reflection. I gripped the wardrobe door with one hand. I widened my eyes. I touched my face. I got to my feet, feeling shaky and insubstantial.

Then I whirled and stalked out the door.

I'd paid attention to where Acantha had led me last night, so I knew to cut through the hallway outside my bedroom, wrench open the third door on the left, run across the gallery where the decorative statuary tried to fall on me (and cursed colorfully when it didn't), shoot up the corkscrew staircase and arrive at the obsidian doors, panting heavily. I pounded on the doors.

They didn't open. The door-mouths yammered inquiringly.

I spoke through my teeth. "I need to speak to Lord Zetta."

The mouths yipped at me. They were laughing. Even though they didn't have eyes, little tears began forming on the obsidian surface.

I thundered on the door with my fists. The little mouths began to sing tunelessly, using my fists as a metronome.

So I screamed: _"Open before I burn you to into matching slags of glass!"_

"_Thbbbbbbbbth!"_ said the mouths.

"WHAT?" Lord Zetta shouted in my ear.

Well, if he didn't mind shouting, I didn't either. I whipped around to face him (he'd come up from behind me; go figure) and shrieked, "What did you do to me?"

"I didn't do anything to you! I _will_ though, if you insist-"

I ignored the sudden image of wild-eyed squirrels that hurtled through my mind. "My face!" I shouted, since he didn't get it. "My eyes! My -ears!"

He gave me a long, incredulous look. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"My ears!" I shouted again. I pointed at them, in case he wasn't familiar with the dialect. "I'm a human! Why are my ears -long and -and pointy all of a sudden?"

"You're dead."

I felt like he'd punched me in the stomach. Well, of course I was dead, but- "What?"

"It happens to all you humans when you die. Just a sign of your own mortality, I guess. Didn't you even notice?"

"What about my eyes?" I demanded.

He frowned. "There's nothing wrong with them."

"They're red."

"And?"

"My eyes were green. Are you saying death changed my eye-color as well?"

"I've never heard of it happening. How did you die?"

I wasn't going to confide in this demon. "Never mind that. You swear you didn't do this to me?"

"Why the hell would I?"

"...Well," I said uncertainly. "Am I...supposed to understand anything that goes through your head?"

He shouldered past me as the doors swung elegantly open. "Don't waste my time."

I took a deep breath, willing myself back under control. "When are you going to begin teaching me?"

He looked over his shoulder at me, frowning distastefully. "I guess we'll begin now."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX

Three solid hours later we stared at the hole in the receiving room wall. It was smoking and beginning to melt at the edges. It let in the air very nicely.

"Work on that spell," was all Lord Zetta said.

I looked uncertainly over at him. "It was powerful."

"And if you can't direct your power, I'm going to put you to sleep."

That afternoon, I watched myself in the wardrobe mirror as I ate my lunch (a bowl of Vendetti-O's.) Halfway through, I put my spoon down and walked up to the mirror, staring at the long, narrow pointed ears that jutted out from my hair, the bright red eyes. These inhuman features dominated my once-familiar face. Death hadn't just killed me; it had turned me into someone else.

I think that's why I sat down and cut my hair. I didn't really think about it as it was happening, any more than I was thinking about breathing. I just had a vague thought that I needed a new face, that I needed to understand I couldn't be the same Salome ever again.

When I looked down and saw most of my hair lying in my lap, I jumped a bit, then looked up at myself again.

My hair was now so short it framed my face and left my long neck entirely bare. I'd cut my bangs close and two locks of hair curved across my cheekbones, towards those insanely red eyes. My ears stuck out to either side like ornaments. Or antlers.

Lord Zetta didn't say anything when he saw me for my evening lesson, just frowned and looked as though he was wondering when I was going to start hacking off fingers for cosmetic purposes. He merely lifted me up in the air and shot me towards the roof, which made me scream. But he halted me an inch from the roof and brought me down again, and the lesson commenced.

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By the time I was able to direct the higher level Mana spells into Lord Zetta's designated targets (not his palace walls), my master was deep in a feud with King Drake the Second and a Half. He wanted to leave me as a surprise for the other Overlords to encounter later (I felt that was probably the highest praise I'd get from him, and more than he'd intended to give me) and so left me at the palace. I was instructed, during the few weeks he'd be abroad, to find _some_ way to clean the palace more efficiently. I asked if I could instead work on some Secret Mana Weapon of Ultimate Might. No, he said. Definitely not.

So while he away, I created Kitt and Kiboodl. I took a black feather boa from my closet and loaded it with Mana power. When the fireworks stopped, I had this long, feathery black centipede creature with hundreds of blobby little feet, four eyes, and a tiny mouth that sucked up everything that could fit through (it also had a very moist and liberal tongue). After Kitt rapturously washed my face in thanks for creating him, I sent him along the bookshelves and any high place that needed to be dusted. Kitt proved capable of walking on every surface, floor, wall or ceiling and even, on occasion, found his way into the Eighth Dimension.

Then I thought about the floors, the ones that weren't dusty, just in incredible need of soap and water. I found a really big horse brush, one with a wood back and big, twelve inch soft bristles. And big; I think it was designed exclusively for mastodons. I grabbed the brush, broke into Lord Zetta's bathroom where I'd heard there was a Jacuzzi (there was) and filled it with water and floor soap. Then I dumped the brush in, set it on spin-cycle, and while lightning and sulfur raged all around me and the Jacuzzi, created Kiboodl.

Kiboodl looked like a lap dog. Actually, he looked like the bottom of a mop, but he looked like one of those lapdogs that look like the bottoms of mops. He had two little blue eyes and a little doggy nose on one end, and at the other end, some of the brush-bristles detached themselves and wagged enthusiastically. There must have been legs under all that hair, but I never found them. Kiboodl slobbered floor soap and water profusely, so I quickly got him off Lord Zetta's bed (where I'd placed him so I could admire him) and carried him off to the foyer. He washed on one end, scrubbed in the middle, dried on the far end, and had it sparkling in an hour.

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Lord Zetta won the feud which brought him back in sky-high spirits (King Drake, on the other hand, fell into despair. Apparently, his father, King Drake the Second, had been a mighty Overlord until he'd mistaken a leaf of Noxious Head-o-Hurtin' for iceberg lettuce, and Drake Jr. had taken the name Second and a Half to ride off his dad's power. A sort of bridge between regimes. But after Lord Zetta annexed six-fifths of his Netherworld, Drake decided it was time to show a new face to the cosmos and retitled himself King Drake the Third). Anyway, Lord Zetta praised Kitt and Kiboodl (though he said some very unflattering things about "obscene levels of cuteness getting in the way of cosmic domination") and we got on with my education.

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"I like this better than the books," I said.

"You do about equally well with either," Zetta said, sitting at his desk and looking over some blueprints for a network of oubliettes to be built under every floor in the palace. Switch-activated trap doors everywhere. It was a fantastic idea, but problematic seeing as most floors in the palace also doubled as ceilings to the rooms below.

I was fondly studying the sword Zetta had put into my hand four hours ago, when we'd begun that day's lesson. It was long and wickedly curved, with an edge that would have never held in the human worlds, but in the Netherworlds was just fine. "How long do you think before I have some implausible sword attacks? Backflips, lightning surges..." I tried not to sound too eager during our lessons, but it was hard.

"Give yourself a few centuries," Zetta replied absently. Then, "Damn. Have to make this work somehow."

"Why not just have really thin oubliettes?"

"You mean like, the width of a floor?"

"Yeah."

"That's about, what, two feet at the very most?"

"Yeah."

"...But when the trapdoor shoots open, they'll only drop about a foot. That won't work."

"Don't use a traditional trap door. Get a panel that shoots horizontally into a pocket. Then the person falls forward onto his face, into the oubliette, getting a concussion and imprisonment altogether."

"I'll talk to the architects about it."

That night as I was lying in bed, cuddling with Kitt and thinking over the day, I sat up straight. The bats rattled and squeaked around my head and flew off in disgust, but I didn't really think about it.

Had that been me?

Me, holding a sword and practicing casting Mana through it so I could kill more soldiers with one swing?

Me casting an Omega fire that set one wing of the palace on fire?

Me talking about more efficient means of imprisoning people?

What was happening to me?

I thought back to my years with the Brave Party, how I'd agonized over each battle, not wanting to visualize the people I would be killing, and yet afraid not to think of them. Afraid of becoming a heartless, killing monster.

I hadn't cast a healing spell in all the time I'd been dead. How long? A year? Two years? Ten? I had trouble grasping time in the Netherworlds.

But...what was there for me to be peaceful for? I was only secure in Zetta's palace as long as I was willing to learn. I had nowhere to go. I had nothing, and I had to gain, and to gain I had to be able to kill. Peace ended with death either way I interpreted the statement.

And the trap doors were a good idea.

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I was making a few turns around the parlor with the katana (Zetta, for reasons that probably escaped even him, just sat down and did our lessons wherever I happened to find him -in his receiving room, in a dining hall, in a torture chamber; today I I'd found him in the parlor trying to compose a national anthem for his Netherworld).

I glanced at the six slimes he'd summoned for my lesson. They were oozing around the room, picking up chairs and lampstands and fireplace pokers for weapons. I caught a flare of fire onto my sword and swung it towards the nearest slime-

"No!" Zetta barked from his seat at the long wooden table. "Casting fire onto your sword is so cliched. Think of something _original_ for a power move."

"It would be effective-"

"Originality! Badass and original, that's what I want."

I huffed through my nose. The slime was squirming towards me, holding a decorative iron giraffe between its pseudopods. I tossed the katana from hand to hand, trying to think of some swell move that no other villain in the long history of villainry had ever thought of before. In exasperation, I jammed my swordblade between the giraffe's horns, flipped it up and used it to bean the slime across its cranial ganglia. It oozed into a flat puddle on the floor.

"Work some magic into that," Zetta said absently. "Okay, what do you think of this?" I kept my ears on him and my eyes on the two slimes that were edging their way around the table.

"Zetta, O Zetta, O Overlord sublime!

When he raises his sword, you're out of time!

He's the greatest Overlord we've ever seen!

He's sexy, he's cool, he's peachy keen!"

The slime that was slightly ahead of the other made a few hops towards me, waving its lampstand. I got clipped on the shoulder, stuck the slime on the end of my sword and started beating the other slime over the head with it. Belatedly, I remembered that I was supposed to be incorporating Mana. I set the slime on my sword on fire and commenced beating.

"He'll come to your kingdoms, and he'll win!

He'll make your empty noggins spin!

When Zetta laughs, the mountain shakes!

When Zetta swears, the cosmos quakes!"

Another slime had crawled along the bookshelves lining the room and dropped onto my head, losing its poker in the process. I swore and did a somersault, squashing the slime but getting goop in my hair. Taking a moment to clean my head with Mana, I waiting until the slime bearing the chair was nearly on me before I set the chair on fire.

"There's none that can stand against Zetta's might!

There's none out there that he can't smite!

Zetta's a legend living today!

Get his dander up and you will pay!"

The slime dropped his flaming chair, rolled himself into a ball and came hurtling toward me. I kicked him with my booted foot. I squelched in about as deep as my ankle. Scraping him off against another table leg, I turned to watch the last slime, balancing a goldfish bowl, complete with goldfish, bearing down on me. Gripping the sword, I let both hands flare with Mana.

"So say goodbye to your Netherworld

If you didn't salute when my flag unfurled!

I'm Zetta, I'm coming, you won't be bored

When I dice you, I spice you, and I'm your Overlord!"

I sent slime and bowl catapulting into the air, hammering them with a steady stream of Mana. When they were directly the tip of my sword, I let them drop.

"It's nice," I said, turning away from the green goo and the splashed water.

"Yeah." Zetta smiled, looking pleased with himself. "My skill with language surprises even me. I'll get the troops memorizing this ASAP. That'll teach the others."

I watched him swing to his feet as I sheathed my sword. "You really are going to try?"

He looked up. "Try what?"

"To become the strongest in the universe?"

"Hell, yes!"

I smiled thoughtfully. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"I just want to know."

"Tch, can't you figure it out yourself? Settle for being a mediocre Overlord? I don't think so! That sort of life's not worth living!"

"But isn't..." I watched him tentatively. "Isn't that the life you're living now?"

He looked at me more seriously. "Okay, look out the window, will you?"

"Huh?"

He gestured impatiently. "I'm going to give you an introspective moment, look out the damn window!"

I went obediently to the window. I gazed out. It was a fairly clear view of the soldier barracks and training compounds. I could make out some groups sparring, but it was mainly empty.

"If I just stay here," Zetta said, at my elbow, "I might as well tuck myself into a grave now. This is no life if it stops here. There's only one way worth going in the cosmos." I looked up from the empty compounds to his glowering profile and back to the compounds again.

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"It means a lot to me that you think I'm ready for this."

"It's not a Valentine."

"Still." I was watching the soldiers pile into their tents from a satisfactorily high vantage, one of the palace's lower ramparts. It was a cold day in the Netherworld, and I was gripping my elbows, both for warmth and to hold in my excitement. I tried not to think about how I'd never been excited for a battle before. But this wasn't just a battle to me. My presence in it was a sign of Zetta's regard for my ability. I glanced sidelong at him, not about to ask if he thought I was really ready. I knew him well enough that such statements were not what he wanted to hear. Ever. Except, maybe, from enemies.

He looked nonchalant, but I could sense he was eager for battle. I tried to compose myself. If he thought I was good enough, I had better be.

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I was.


	5. Chapter 5

5

The morning after my first battle (since my second day in Zetta's Netherworld), I was awakened by the sound of falling masonry tumbling in the foyer. I unwound Kitt from my neck, got tangled in a sheet and fell out of bed, bats dropping all around me like confetti. I jerked on my dressing gown and dashed through the citadel to one of the balconies that overlooked the front hall.

Looking down, I saw Zetta talking to -to...I doubt even it knew what it was. On top it was steel blue with a bald, horned head on a torso with four arms and four muscular pecs with a large smooth-cut emerald in the middle topping a heap of abs. About in its lap, it had another face, very female with haughty closed eyes, brighter blue skin, and long brown hair that was swirling in its own wind. And under that was the gigantic black skull of a dragon with parted jaws and an enormous, lidless, flaming, slit-pupiled eye in its mouth. And black bat wings. Black bat wings were everywhere. And everything was covered in powdered stone from the wreckage of the front door. We'd get the masons on that as soon as possible...

"Everyone's _talking_ about it," this frettish, lisping male voice was saying. "Up at headquarters, we just can't believe it how you ran Vultyr d'Morgue _out_ like that. I mean, he'd been hiding in his Netherworld for, what, two millennia? Most of us had forgotten he even existed." About then I realized it was the top section of the thing talking.

"Hya HA!" Zetta hya HAed. "That's the problem with you top Overlords -you've been in power so long, you've forgotten how to rock the boat!"

"It must tell you, Zetta -I'm impressed. I really am."

"Of _course_ you are."

"Annexing an entire Netherworld in one battle. That's really something."

"Damn right it is!"

"And the way you tied Vultyr's vocal cords in a Christmas bow around his neck -that was pretty disgusting, but it too shall go down in the Overlord Annals."

"It better get a chapter!"

"Of course," a liquidy female voice spoke up then (it was the middle section), "while we were watching on the HV, Lord Aerfa did have a bit of a fit."

"Oh good. Is he molting?"

"No," she answered. "It seems he noticed that you have a human in your army."

The top section drew in a deep, exhaustive gasp. "Zetta! You_ know_ that's against Overlord policy! All humans, once dead, are the exclusive property of the _Overlord_ of the _Underworld_."

Zetta shrugged. "Like I said, you guys don't remember how to rock. What's he planning to do about it?"

"MURDER!" boomed the dragon skull while the eye shot out flames in a thick, writhing pillar. "PILLAGE! CARNAGE GALORE!"

I could_ hear_ Zetta's exultant grin. "Can't wait!"

"Who is she?" the woman's head inquired.

"Just a girl I picked up in hell."

The top section spoke. "Keeping a human woman as a pet? That's naughty, Zetta. Tut-tut."

"She's not a pet," Zetta shot back. "She's my...disciple."

"What's her name?" the woman's head asked.

Silence in the front hall.

Sixty miles away, a sheep bleated.

"I have business to attend to," Zetta said firmly.

"She's definitely a powerful little thing," the woman's head persisted.

"Of course she is," Zetta retorted. "I taught her!"

"But a human. Dirty."

"Want me to decapitate you?"

"Zetta!" the top section cried. "Noo-oo! Y-you have business to attend to!"

"Did I say that?" Zetta demanded.

"Y-yes!"

"...Lucky you, then." Zetta turned away. "Talk to you later, Micky."

"Hey!" the woman's head shouted. "We're here too!"

"DISCRIMINATION!" bellowed the dragon.

"See you... later, Zetta," the top thing said miserably. After a moment, it (they?) shimmered out of sight and another wing of the palace caved in.

I went back to my room, mulling the conversation over. It hadn't occurred to me that my presence in yesterday's battle would signify anything to that rather mysterious group of Other Overlords. But apparently, they had been watching, and it_ had_ signaled something to them. And apparently, I was a powerful little thing. Oh yes, and dirty.

I got dressed, then quickly streaked on some eye-liner and black lipstick. Barbarian, yes, but I have nice lips. And after all these years (decades?), I'd even grown accustomed to my red eyes. I stepped back and regarded myself in the mirror, squaring my bare shoulders and lifting my chin. I liked the effect.

I found Zetta at his lunch (everyone had slept in after yesterday's battle and ensuing celebration). He was gnawing on a barbecued cocatrice wing and listening as Q made a report. I smiled at her as I came in. Q glanced at me a moment. Ah. I saw she still had some squirrel marks on her from our last meeting. Odd, it was almost as if Raia had been ordered not to heal her.

"You're dismissed," Zetta said, sighing a bit impatiently. He waited until we were alone before saying, "The assassination attempt failed."

"What? I thought we'd heard for sure that Alex goes and visits his Netherworld orphanage every Wednesday evening."

"He did. But the orphan we hired to shoot him was put in the time-out corner; apparently the matron found his cyanide capsules and was annoyed he 'hadn't brought enough for everyone'."

"Well, that's what? Attempt 752?"

Zetta shook his head. "Only since you've been here. It's actually attempt 3629.5." Seeing my raised eyebrows, he clarified. "We don't count the jellyfish in the bathtub as a full attempt."

I sat down across the table from him and idly picked today's comics from the scattered morning paper. "Who was that who came earlier?"

"Dark Lord Valvoga," Zetta answered, poring over the casualty lists of the various feuds among the Netherworlds.

"You called him Micky."

"The top one's Micky. The middle's Ophelia, the Fallen Angel. Bottom's Dryzen."

"What's he?"

"A psychotic dragon skull that unfortunately evolved to self-awareness." He took a sip of piping hot Hero's Blood from a mug bearing a smiley face with a dripping sword through its forehead.

"Is there any Echidna's Milk?"

Zetta threw his table knife at the gong. It severed the cord by which the gong hung, sending the gong slamming onto the stone floor. A servant trotted in. In a few moments, I had my milk.

After one or two sips, I cupped my chin in my palm and watched him read. "I like how you put it."

He looked up, a bit dazedly. "Huh?"

"Disciple. I like how that sounds."

He snapped the paper around to the book review. "It's what you are."

"Still. It sounded good when you said it."

He looked up, as if trying to figure out what language I was speaking in. "What the hell?" I smiled and shook my head at him. He flicked the paper back up.

"Is there any cockatrice left over from last night?"

Zetta shot out his right hand. The gong surged up through the air, stopped abruptly, and came crashing back down to the floor.

A few minutes later, I was cutting a cockatrice breast. I finished the comics and handed them to Zetta. He passed me the arts page. "What's on the agenda for today?" I asked.

"Not sure yet. I've tracked down a few more minor Overlords, got some soldiers scouting them out. No particular course of action is jumping out yet, but that could be changed easily." Zetta was never the sort of person who let opportunity knock at his door. He stalked opportunity. "I'm thinking that maybe I'll check the Sacred Tome, see what it says."

After so many years, I was still hearing unfamiliar terms. "Sacred Tome? What's that?"

Zetta, having received a question that required specific explanation, looked up from the paper. "Every Netherworld has its source of ultimate power, you know that."

"Of course. Vultyr's was a cucumber in his refrigerator. The Sacred Tome's yours?"

"None other. It holds the essence of my Netherworld and everything in it. I understand it's also prophetic. If I go down and read it, it should give me some pretty good ideas."

"You're saying my essence is bound up in some old book?"

"Everything currently in my Netherworld. Are you going to lose sleep over this?"

"I take it you don't leave it lying around your bedroom."

"No."

"I have a question."

"Imagine that."

"Did you conquer this Netherworld too?"

"Nah. Inherited it."

I was surprised. "I didn't know demons had families."

He smiled. "We have to come from somewhere."

I hesitated, wondering if this might be a difficult subject. "What happened to your family?"

He frowned. "Most of them are still here."

I couldn't believe it. "Where?"

He swung to his feet, apparently bored with the local news. "I'll show you." I took a last gulp of milk and followed him out a side door to his dining chamber, down a short dark hallway and into a wide, octagonal chamber. There were no windows, and the walls alternated between red and gold. There were large portraits and glass display cases and pillars. I looked around for maybe an aged relative lurking dustily in a corner but saw nothing.

Zetta rested his elbow on a high display case. "Meet the family."

I went over.

In the display case were six thimble-sized hunks of hardened lava.

"Zetta?"

"My brothers," he continued, and counted them off from, what I assumed, oldest to youngest, "Eeba, Toopa, Weffa, Qualla, Jegga and Meexa. I'm the youngest."

"And...why aren't you also a blob of coagulated magma?"

He glanced sidelong down at his older siblings. "I won the Big Spat."

"Are they still alive?"

"Oh yeah."

"Are you planning on changing them back?"

"Of course." He shrugged. "Eventually. When I find the reversal spell."

"Are they...listening? Can they hear? Are they breathing?"

He grinned, showing his fangs. "They're really weirding you out?"

"It's a bit bizarre." I stepped away from the case. "What about your parents?" I asked, warily looking around and wondering what display case they might be in.

"Dead," Zetta answered, striding away from his brothers to the far end of the room. "Dad was bitten by one of those sheep. Mom died when she accidentally ate some food with salt on it. Here's their picture."

It was fairly obvious where Zetta got his looks from. The man in the portrait was tall, thickset and blue-skinned, but he had the same blazing eyes and piles of flaming hair. He wore a suit of black plate mail, barbed and studded on every inch. His muscular arms were crossed in front of his chest. He had no hands, just massive, sharply-cloven hooves.

His wife stood next to him, a slender demon who barely came up to his elbow, elegant in a long white gown with her curling blonde hair framing her face and neck. Her eyes were the color of amethysts and her lips were like coral.

I nodded. "So you inherited from your father."

Zetta snorted derisively. "Hell, no. From my mother. She was the scary one. And she left plenty of fun for her successor. Werewolves, dragons, hinkypunks... Nearly died a few times in my early years."

"Demons are immortal, right? You won't die unless someone kills you?"

He turned to face me. "Right. Ergo, I'm _never_ going to die!"

Just then a dart landed in his neck.

I would have screamed except that I was too busy holding my hand against the side of his neck and casting a healing spell. He'd already dragged the dart out (hadn't even gasped or anything) and was irately scanning the room. "Get out here, you bastard!"

There was a small explosion behind one of the pillars.

"Damn," Zetta breathed. Whoever was back there was no longer in a position to talk. "Hands off! I'm fine!" I reluctantly took my hand away. I glanced down at my palm and saw, to amazement, that my master didn't bleed. I joined Zetta at the pillar.

All that was left of the would-be assassin was a charred spot on the carpet and a pair of shoes.

"One of Alex's," Zetta said. Then he smiled in satisfaction. "This gives me something to do today."

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"It only seemed polite to return the favor," Alex explained from his defensive line on the battlefield we'd found him stationed in. A row of tanks stood between the God of Destruction and Zetta. "I mean, awfully generous of you to try to mix a bullet in my brains, so I couldn't let a thing like that go unanswered."

"Really?" Zetta said back, having summoned me and the three tents (Alex had shot a mystified look in my direction but ignored me for the moment). "I was hoping you wouldn't be around to send a thank-you note."

"Oh _no_, Zetta. I'm _always_ gonna be here. Much longer than a bushy-haired, er, guy like you!"

"Don't _tell_ me you've stopped writing out your end of the dialogue before battles. This preamble is hardly worth the effort!"

"Huh! The fact that we were _gonna_ battle entirely escaped my mind!" Just then the tanks started revving their turbo engines.

"Well, if you're lucky, the pain you're about to suffer will escape your mind likewise!"

Then the tanks surged forward and mud was flying. I tapped into my Mana and saw Alex glance narrow-eyed at me before meeting Zetta's first attack (which involved a lot of fire and several backflips). Zetta had told me that the higher demons can feel each other's Mana as separate presences, a skill totally cut off from humans. I called on the power for an Omega wind spell, targeted about three tanks, and cast.

After I was done dodging shrapnel, I looked around to gauge the state of the battle. Zetta and Alex were off in their own violent world. Mel had also been summoned and was casting Omega fire on another flank of tanks. Rem and Kogo were sniping at the survivors of my spell. Felix the Hell-Kitty was swinging his morning star at one of Alex's healers. Valeria, Ilyxiveth and Sarah were busy harrying Alex until Zetta waved them off, snarling with ferocious delight.

I saw a sword mistress swinging a six-foot long saber at me (amazing how these weapons are only possible in the Netherworlds). I dodged the attack and, pivoting on the heel of one shoe, kicked her in the chest. By the time I squared off on my feet again, I'd drawn my katana, spun around and-

Yes. I cut off her head at the neck.

And I knew I should feel much worse than I did. Somewhere, I thought -I shouldn't be happy just because I'm powerful.

And then I thought, I'm _dead!_ Power is the closest to happiness I can get.

And...I couldn't believe how powerful I was.

I spun around and rammed my sword halfway through the body of the thief that had come up behind me. Then I charged my sword with lightning Mana and sent it flashing through an enemy healer.

_They can be reincarnated,_ I told myself.

Even if they couldn't have, I knew I shouldn't stop.

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We had our second major celebration in two days that night. Well after midnight, Oliver was still making rounds with Hero's Blood, Echidna's Milk, King's Water and Molotov Cocktails. That night I tottered unsteadily into bed, the bats having long flown. Kiboodl wuffed sleepily at me, and Kitt coiled himself into a feathery ball in the small of my back. All the images of the day were swirling and messed up in my mind, and I tried hard to dismiss them, to quiet my brain long enough to sleep. But I kept coming back to that afternoon, over and over again. I knew it wasn't doing me any particular good to keep reliving it; my thinking about it wouldn't change anything. And even if it upset me a bit, frightened me a bit, and pleased me alarmingly, I shouldn't dwell on it. Should I?

I wasn't thinking about decapitating that sword mistress.

I was remembering touching Zetta's skin.

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When Zetta declared to Sashenka, Queen of Perdition, that he was going to annex her Netherworld in less than a century, the war effort at home was vastly accelerated. Aside from my two daily lessons, Zetta threatened to lock me in the Forbidden Library if I didn't start reading up on advanced Mana technique. He had the platoon leaders drilling every day, had the new hospitals and shops hard at work. He also continued his assault on the minor Overlords, gaining land and Mana from their defeats. After some time he went on the attack against Valvoga and came back, not only on still-amicable terms with the Dark Lord, but with his entire collection of drills. Because I seemed to have risen not only to the level of disciple but administrative second-in-command, I was busy too, and lonely. Zetta often wondered aloud why I wouldn't stop talking during our lessons. Nevertheless, he rarely hesitated to talk back.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX

So I was very happy to see Zetta walk into my room one afternoon when we didn't have any lessons scheduled. "I have some good news for you," he said, smiling.

I looked up from my bowl of Shamble's canned tomato basilisk soup. "What?" I asked, trying not to smile too much.

"Aerfa's dead."

"_What?"_

"He was overthrown and killed last night."

"By who?"

Zetta laughed shortly. "That's the interesting part. By one of his own subjects. A damned human."

I was stunned for a moment. "That's possible? I thought only demons could be Overlords."

"Power's all that really matters when it comes to being Overlord."

"Do you know who did it?"

"Yeah. He showed up right in the middle of our Overlord assembly. He's called Seedle."

Zetta laughed. "It's surprising. And good. We need some new competition."

Zetta frowned and looked at me. "What's wrong?"

Zetta gripped my shoulder and shook it slightly. I jerked away and got to my feet, capsizing the chair I'd been sitting on. "Oh," I said, trying to sound composed.

"What the hell's wrong with you?"

I stared at Zetta a long time, wondering if I should tell him. I wanted him to know the story, to feel the anger at the injustice raging through me. I wanted him to agree that this wasn't_ right_ and share my hatred of Seedle. But I wondered if I wouldn't just be laughed at. Laughed at for being so weak I couldn't prevent a death I didn't deserve. So weak that I'd turned into the victim of a man I'd trusted.

_Besides,_ I told myself, _he doesn't need to know about it._ That was behind me. I was not the woman I'd been then.

But Seedle? The ruler of a Netherworld?

"I'm just surprised. I knew Seedle. A bit. When we were alive."

Zetta was still watching me narrowly.

"I didn't like him much," I said by way of explanation.

"Hmph. So not good news, I guess."

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I think Zetta was a little surprised by my attacks' levels of ferocity in my lesson that night. He seemed pleased, unaware that I was busy raging at myself, forcing strong Mana into my system, telling myself over and over and over again that I wasn't weak anymore, that I couldn't be hurt through the wishes of others.

After the lesson, I was so tired I almost told the whole story to Zetta. Then I remembered that, whatever I wanted, he was a demon, and he'd probably think it was just pathetic.

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I had difficulty sleeping that night, thinking of Seedle, cozy in his own Netherworld, Dominator of the Souls of Men.

Around one thirty or so I drifted out of bed, into my robe and out the door. Maybe it wasn't exactly wise to go wandering the halls of a demon Overlord's palace, but I wasn't afraid. The only thing in this place that could frighten me now was Zetta, and I would've been happy to see him. He was attending Aerfa's funeral that night, an assembly likely to be more giddy than otherwise.

The night guards didn't acknowledge me as I passed. Eventually I found myself in the dark kitchens, standing and contemplating the innards of one of the larger refrigerators. I chewed a bit on some roast unicorn and grew restless again. I roamed back up through the palace, glancing out of the windows into the black-red night. I looked up at the stars. Somewhere out there, Seedle was king of his own Netherworld.

I remembered twisting the dagger into his chest, winding down his heart like a clock. I was supposed to have killed him, finished him, annihilated him from existence so he couldn't move or breathe or think of me again. Things weren't that easy.

I wanted Zetta to be back, to fill my silence and uneasiness with plans and tactics and boasts. I wanted the one who had made me so powerful that, at least for a while, I hadn't been afraid of dying.

I remembered that once, after some battle, I'd mentioned how easily I'd thought I could die. He'd given me a look of such complete scorn and said, "What the hell? Do you_ see_ all this blood on the field? Do you _remember_ pulverizing those soldiers? Who do you think could kill you? Especially with me here." That was about as comforting as Zetta ever got, but I was still reassured. _He_ didn't think I was going to die again.

So why was I suddenly so afraid of a man I'd been able to kill as a weak human?

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"I think it's about time we see what this human's made of."

I looked up from a blueprint of the new prison compound we were having built. "What do you mean?" I asked, a bit of knowing dread in my voice.

"The Overlord Seedle. I thought we'd bring in some battalions, make him feel welcome here."

Whatever I might've said was firmly in my throat.

Zetta turned on his heel. "Go tell Q to get the units ready. We'll go as soon as my cape's out of the dryer."

"Zetta-" That was about all I could get out at first. I stalled by rolling up the blueprint. "Do I- can I-"

He whipped around impatiently. "What?"

I tried to sound casual as I shrugged one shoulder. "I'd rather not go this time."

Silence.

"What?"

I braced. "I don't want to go."

He ran his eyes quickly up and down my body as if looking for a lost limb or a fatal pox or some visible proof I wasn't who he'd thought I was. "Why the hell not?"

I worked to keep my voice steady and firm. "I told you, I don't like Seedle."

"All the more reason to come."

I shook my head, looking down.

"Well?"

"I...don't think you'll understand."

"Well, if you don't expect me to understand, I don't see why you expect me to care. Get ready."

My head jerked up. "I'm serious, Zetta._ I don't want to go._"

He watched me a long moment. After a struggle, I let myself widen my eyes, show him that I wasn't doing it out of defiance, I was scared. For a moment, I thought he was going to relent -then his face hardened, and he squared his shoulders. "Do you think you can just tell me 'no'? I'm your Overlord!"

"Do you think you can just break my will with threats?" I demanded, fear and hurt making me angry.

The air around Zetta was crackling with Mana. I felt my own Mana rise to meet his, but I pushed it down. I didn't want to fight Zetta. Zetta's Mana continued to surge around him, but he didn't strike.

"Grateful, aren't you?" Zetta wondered out loud. "If you don't want to fight, maybe I should bind your Mana power altogether!"

"Maybe you should just go," I said back.

"Maybe I should. The troops have gotten too reliant on your power in battle. It's about time they were shook up a bit. As for you..."

I tried to look at him steadily.

His face softened marginally. "Damn. Why are you doing this?"

I shook my head and had to be the one who looked away.

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I didn't see Zetta again for awhile.

He came back from the battle later that night, but when I arrived at his room the next morning for my lesson, I was told by a guard that Zetta wasn't going to see me. Instead, I was left with a heap of books to study.

I broke down after a bit and sought out Rem for information. She was civil, but not entirely friendly; I'd grown far too close to Zetta to be at all familiar with the soldiers.

She told me Zetta and Seedle had fought a fairly well-matched fight and had left it at that. I knew Zetta didn't have much interest in claiming the Underworld. At least, not until he'd conquered the more desirable Netherworlds. I asked Rem if she had any idea what Zetta thought of Seedle. She gave me a long blank glare and said, "Of course not."

I went again for my evening lesson and was sent away. It happened every day after that. I might've stopped coming, but I felt I had a point to prove. I might have thwarted Zetta's authority, but I was still his disciple.

You'll say I was being stupid. He was a _demon_. You'll say I would've spent my time more usefully by banging my head into a granite wall, anything but blankly read my spell books and miss him so much it hurt. Well. Remember it's just as easy for you to be wrong as it is for me.

Of course, I didn't hurt just because I was alone. I mainly hurt because of the proof he'd given me, that I was just a human, that I wasn't his equal.

_Damn,_ I told myself. _It's what you get._

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I was busy administrating to Q's platoon, killing off soldiers and finding adequate stones, shrubs or palm trees to reincarnate them with (only marginally pleased that I was handling an Overlord-level spell with considerable ease) when a messenger (a tattered ghost) rippled up and told me to prepare for the final assault against Sashenka. Inwardly, I sighed deeply with relief. Ever since our argument, Zetta had entirely withdrawn me from battle, leaving me to sit at home and rankle. That he was deploying me meant that he'd either forgiven me (I wouldn't hope; I _wouldn't_ hope) or that he didn't want to take any chances. More likely the latter. Sashenka was one of the higher-level Overlords, quite as powerful as Humbaba. Of course, even she was leagues behind Sufferoth.

"Q!" I barked.

Off to my left, Sam sniffled. "What?" I demanded.

"You -you still need to reincarnate her."

"Oh." I glanced around the training compound. "Bring me that hubcap. I'll use that."

When Q was back, I ordered her to get the troops into the tents. I strode back towards the citadel, wondering if Zetta would grace me with any pre-battle instructions. I found him stalking along the low battlements, watching the platoons tumble into their tents. He saw me immediately, his expression darkening so quickly that I had no idea what he'd been thinking.

"You ready to fight _today_?" he asked caustically.

I worked to stay cool and haughty. "I am."

"Good, Sashenka won't be easy. That is," he amended, "not in the battle- sense of the word."

"What's her weakness?"

"Fire. But don't hold back from using any physical attacks either. Hit her hard and as often as you can. Let the soldiers deal with her auxiliary."

I glanced at him. He seemed talkative, but his face was still set in grim lines, eyes glowing moodily. _Did I do that?_ I wondered. _Or is he just nervous?_ According to Rem, he'd been doing well against Sashenka's henchmen, but the Queen of Perdition was something else entirely.

"How do you feel about our chances?" I asked.

"If you just shut up, they should be great."

I bit my lip.

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Oh dammit. I should've guessed.

I glanced over at Rem, who was positioned a few strides behind me on the battlefield. "You didn't tell me Sashenka was-"

Rem shrugged. "What'd you expect?"

I trained my eyes on the Overlord at the far end of the field. She had to _glue_ those metal straps in place, that's all there was to it. They couldn't have stayed on otherwise. And red lace didn't do much for a person with pink skin. And her spiky orange hair was just ugly, all right?

While Zetta and the Queen of Perdition were busy flirting with each other before they commenced with the killing, I withdrew my Mana power in small amounts, so small they wouldn't be distinguishable from the smaller hordes belonging to Mel, Mesmer and the enemy mages. While Sashenka was picking up her long tail and swinging its pointed end playfully against Zetta's chest, I shot a small spear of Mana towards her. I surveyed my handiwork. I sent another spear. Much better. I sent a another spear towards her chin. Then her thighs.

Zetta waved his hand to get Sashenka to stop in the middle of her monologue. His frown was distinctly disappointed. "...Sash..."

"What?" she asked irritably. She probably would've tapped her foot in impatience except for the fact that she put her hand on her hip first.

Sashenka's eyes rounded. "What the-" She glanced down at her hip, poked it with her finger. Her fingertip sunk in about, oh, half an inch.

"AAAAAGH!" Sashenka screamed. Couldn't blame her. It wasn't her fault she'd suddenly put on sixty-five pounds.

Zetta meanwhile was watching me, eyes narrowed. I glared back, _so_ sorry to have ruined his fun.

Anyway, Sashenka responded to discovering herself by sending spears of ice thrusting upwards through the battlefield. I rode up on the tip of one, heart hammering with alarm, and quickly jumped off, landing quite deliberately on the head of a Hell-Kitty. I dispatched it with the heel of my boot, drew my sword, and made my first lunge towards Sashenka. She didn't see me coming, simultaneously trying to slaughter Zetta and reduce her cellulite. I got one good swipe into her before she loosed a surge of Mana into my face. I went somersaulting back, landing hard on the base of my spine at the far end of the field. Body shrieking with pain, I scrambled to my feet, killed a thief that was swinging in towards me, and ran back towards the battling Overlords. I struck with a steady stream of fire Mana and used it as a cover to close in with my sword. When the fire cleared, I had a great view of Zetta trying to pull his sword free of Sashenka's collarbone before she got off her Mega-Millennia attack.

Neither of us were fast enough.

There was a purple explosion, and we went flying together, giving each other irate looks as we arced over the battlefield.

When we landed, Zetta jerked me to my feet and started dashing back for Sashenka. "_Faster_ this time!" he said. Whether he was referring to getting to Sashenka, stabbing her, pulling our weapons free, or the level of acceleration with which we should next go hurtling through the air was beyond me. I hurried up.

Sashenka had trimmed down her thighs by the time we got back to her. I shot out with my Mana and gave her a pudgy neck. As she (having figured out who was behind the handiwork) gave me a look of ultimate ire, Zetta had a chance to kick her up into the air. Everyone on the battlefield watched her ascent. After a moment, Zetta followed her on a wave of light, cutting her six ways at about a height of three hundred feet. Nice move. Very classic.

Not that it finished her off.

Sashenka came shrieking back to earth, withdrew a wicked, barbed four-pronged red javelin and used it to pitchfork me into the air. I rose about twenty feet, then fell, just barely missed being impaled on one of the javelin's prongs. I hit the edge of one instead. A bloody wound streaked down my exposed side (well, the cropped shirt had looked really good), and I landed with a rattling crash. I held my side, vision fading in and out. I caught glimpses of Zetta and Sashenka's weapons flashing on and off each other as I staggered upright. I joined Zetta in his attack, Sashenka bouncing in the air above our sword tips.

"Damn you -Zetta!" Sashenka screamed.

"Hyaaaa hahahahahahahahahahaha-" STAB.

Which seemed like a good enough way to end it.

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Right there on the battlefield, the troops started whipping out the booze, firing rounds into the air and turning cartwheels. Zetta was carried up over the field on a surge of Mana, still laughing exultantly. I smiled, watching him, but had to sit down, glancing to see the blood trickle down my hip and thigh. I had to shout at Raia to get her attention so she could heal me. When she was done, I watched Zetta careen through the stratosphere, turn a backflip and come slamming back down to earth, rattling the entire field. I got up and walked to the far end of the field before he could notice me again. I didn't want to ruin this moment for Zetta by reminding him I was there.

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"Well?"

I jumped but turned around slowly.

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

"Congratulations," I said warily. Oh. He was so happy he was going to take the opportunity to curse me out?

I'd been found in the observatory, an enormous skull-shaped dome with eyes that stared out into the cosmos. I'd been avoiding all of about sixty celebration parties taking place throughout his Netherworld.

"About time! I've been looking for you half the night." He put his hands on his hips and watched me levelly. "You certainly don't look happy."

"I am. I've never been happier for you, Zetta."

"Then what're you doing up _here_?"

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"I thought you'd be -Never mind." His good mood seem to have gone.

My heart lifted slightly. I knew he wouldn't say as much, but I was fairly sure that by seeking me out he was extending forgiveness. I smiled slightly. "How does it feel to be a top-tier Overlord?"

"Good." He grinned. "But not good enough! It's not going to stop here!"

My smile widened, and I shook my head. "I'm not surprised. I don't expect anything but full throttle from you."

"Good."

I glanced at him again, delighted to see him so happy, glad I'd had a hand in it. I moved closer to one of the windows.

"How's your wound?"

I looked over, surprised he'd even seen it in the fervor of combat. "It's fine now. No scar."

"Good. We'll work more on evasion tomorrow. But damn, good job on your attacks today."

"You're praising yourself, of course."

He laughed heartily. "I guess I am! And why not? I'm a badass top-tier OVERLORD! There's no one who can stand against me!"

I looked away from Zetta, not about to remind him of my own recent defiance. He joined me at the window, leaning an elbow against the rim of the eye socket. "What do you think? Go after Humbaba next, or straight on to Sufferoth? Or how about attacking Babylon? That could be fun."

"They'd all be fun. But I heard that we've got an uprising in the city. I'd like to do a bit of individuality-quashing first."

"Then we'll do that," he said, generous because he was happy. I couldn't look at him anymore. I could feel my eyes turning starry. "This battle," Zetta was saying. "HAH! I don't think we've been in finer form."

"The same couldn't be said of Sashenka."

"That was very, very evil."

"Thank you."

"I'm proud of you."

I laughed, happier than I could ever remember. "You're proud of yourself."

"I'm proud of you too."

I looked up at him.

Sometimes your fate can be determined by a look.

I can't know what would've been different if I hadn't looked up. But I wouldn't have seen him giving me a smile that pushed away most of my misgivings. I definitely wouldn't have leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, my hands coming up touch his shoulders, his face. He started in surprise. I jerked away quickly, not afraid he was going to hit me but afraid he was going to pull back in disgust, give me a glare of revolted disbelief. I looked at his neck, not his face, as I whispered either my explanation or my apology: "I'm happy for you."

"All right...Be happy," he said after a long moment, pulling me close, kissing my shoulder, my ear. After the first surge of amazement, I held him fast. He was real in my arms; if he was real, this must be really happening.

After he'd been holding me several moments, I felt him sigh and heard him clear his throat. "Uhm."

I opened my eyes. "What?"

He ran his hand along the curve in my neck. "What_ is_ your name?"

I smiled. "Salome."

"Salome."


	6. Chapter 6

_Author's note: Hi there. I'm only interrupting the flow of the story right now because this fanfiction is ten chapters long; this means we're about to enter the second half, so I'd like to take this moment to thank everyone who's read this story so far. Considering that Makai Kingdom isn't one of the more famous rpgs, I'm quite pleased and surprised by the number of hits this story has gotten so far. I'd especially like to thank Iluminet, Bella and Blue Paladin for consistently giving such thoughtful, detailed reviews. I'm very, very grateful to you three. As for any who reads without reviewing, I'm grateful to you people also, though I like reviews, and I especially like to hear people's thoughts. What are you talking about? I never hint._

_(dabs at eyes). Okay. I'll talk to you again later. Back to the story._

6

"Here's the new shipment of squirrels."

I walked across the training compound to the steel crate Luvenya had spirited in. I couldn't see much through the air holes except for beady, manic flashing eyes and incisors. "Excellent," I said. With all the prison building projects underway, we'd needed more squirrels for every Squirrel Oubliette. "What about the next shipment of anti-aircraft guns, when are those coming in?"

"Should be here by next Doomsday, Cryday at the latest."

I sighed impatiently. "No way to get them by Moanday?"

"I'll try but don't expect miracles."

I put my hand on my hip. "Zetta'd like to start the invasion on Minor Overlord Robespierre-Voltaire du Whiff as soon as this Sadderday."

"Where _is_ the Overlord? I've got some of that new shampoo he wanted -shampoo, conditioner and lighter-fluid all in one."

"He went off this morning so he could see to a pack of werewolves out in the country. Apparently the sheep have been weeding out the best in the pack. After that he said he was going to shoot some planet pool with Babylon and Valvoga."

Later that afternoon as I was touring one of the newer public schools, making sure that everything was coated in the highest quality lead-based paint (remember, children are our future) a panting runner heaved his way up to my side. "Mistress Salome!"

"What's wrong?" Based on the way sweatdrops were soaring off his face, something had to be wrong.

"The squirrels forced their way out of their crate! They're demanding autonomy within the Netherworld."

After I discussed things with the squirrels' self-appointed leader and got a division of demons to sponge up the blood and fur, I wearily made my way back to the palace. Once inside my room, I picked up the papers, the local monthly (the _GaZetta_), and the daily interNetherworld piece (the _Netherworld Roast_). The _GaZetta_ didn't have anything more interesting than the touching last words of the incendiaries we'd executed two weeks ago. I opened the Roast and scanned various pages until I hit the column with my name in it.

Hm. I shifted a bit uncomfortably in my chair. I wasn't an idiot; I knew spies were everywhere, and I knew word would get out about "Zetta's pet". That didn't mean I was thrilled to see it. I wondered what Zetta would make of it...

"So it_ is _you."

The voice came from directly behind me.

There was a short laugh. "Surprised?"

"Not really," I said, speaking more slowly than my heart was pounding. "Only a highly-powerful being could get past the barricades around this palace."

"What a nice compliment."

"Don't savor it. I'll be fast enough to kick you out." I stood up and turned around.

He laughed, loud and harsh. "Black lips. Long black nails. How different you look. What happened to the noble priestess of the White Hand?"

"She was killed."

"How sad," he answered with a smile. Then his eye lit in wonder. "Your face...Don't tell me-"

"I won't. You won't be around to hear it."

"Your eyes are red! Finally I have the satisfaction of knowing I left _some_ mark on you!"

That's how I figured out why my eyes had so dramatically changed color at death. I remembered twisting the knife through Seedle, and I remembered him spitting his blood into my eyes.

"Get out!" I screamed, my Mana ripping through the room, tossing the bed curtains and covers, sending the papers swirling between us.

Seedle laughed.

"I killed you. And I'd love to do it again."

"You think you can kill me now?" He looked unsettlingly unchanged, his angular face accented with a grim smile, his body no less muscular after centuries of death. He had his old sword which I remembered so vividly as well as a new one. His ears were pointed like mine. His eye was eager for struggle.

I laughed back. "I think I can."

He bared his teeth and drew sword. "This is a touching reunion, Salome."

I shook my head, still smiling. "There won't be any touching."

"No ordering me around. I _am_ your rightful Overlord." His sword flashed out with a burning slash of pain. I was bleeding across the stomach. I sent a fire spell right into his face, hoping it would hit the brain. He pivoted, swung around with incredible grace and lunged to cut me off from my Mana. I dodged and drew my own katana.

"This is interesting," Seedle observed. "He's taught you how to use a sword. Tell me, have you learned a lot from Lord Zetta?"

I swiped, drawing blood across his chest. He pulled his other sword out and went at me. I retreated a pace, gathering Mana into my free hand.

"I'm sure you know what the rumors are saying," Seedle went on. He jabbed. I swerved to relative safety on the far side of the table. "I wouldn't have thought it of you, Salome. You couldn't stand _my_ touch, and now you're throwing yourself away on a demon."

My Mana lashed out. He almost dodged, fire lunging across his right shoulder, leaving it totally charred. He held onto the sword but didn't seem able to make any effective thrusts with it. I didn't listen to him cursing me out, I continued circling, trying to keep the length of my bedroom between us.

Seedle's voice was ragged, his teeth bared. "I'll tell you what I told you _then_, Salome: don't be afraid."

I parried his sword blow, my arm straining against the weight of his sword, the metal blades scraping against each other, my muscles shaking. "I'm not."

I released another fire spell into his face. He yowled with pain and rage, grabbing my left arm and breaking both bones in my forearm in half. Pain and darkness roared around me, and I fell to the ground. When I could see again, Seedle was gone.

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"You aren't going to tell Lord Zetta that you had to heal my arm and my stomach. You aren't going to mention it at all."

Though her eyes were closed, Acantha turned her head uncertainly in my direction. "Mistress Salome?"

"If you tell him," I warned in my hardest tones, "I'll bind your Mana. I might even kill you."

"Of course, Mistress Salome." She went out, closing the door behind her. I lay back in bed, tired from both the brief duel and Acantha's healing. I told her I'd had an accident and fallen. Maybe she believed it. Zetta certainly never would. Why couldn't I just tell him the truth?

Maybe when my struggle with Seedle finally ended in victory I could tell Zetta about my painful defeats.

By the time he came back from shooting pool, I seemed fine.

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About six weeks later Zetta had moved most of his army entirely out into the field. The Minor Overlord Du Whiff had evaded us by hiding in the Swamp of Dejection, so we were forced to camp in the muck and wait it out. Well, the troops that is. Luvenya found me and Zetta (and herself) these great tents that levitated, had indoor plumbing and hard-wood flooring. But the rest of the troops, they were in the muck.

Anyway, I was jolted awake one morning by Zetta pounding on the door. "Salome! Wake up!"

Kitt and Kiboodl (when it had become fairly apparent we wouldn't be back at the palace for several weeks, I'd packed them up too) picked up their heads and started yapping. I looked at the clock: three thirty-nine in the morning. What was he doing up? He could usually sleep until noon. I dropped back onto the pillow and said, "What?"

"Let me in!"

I pointed my index finger at the door and unlocked it. "You're in."

He was in after a moment, and bounding. "Look!"

"'Stoo dark."

A bright ball of orange fire appeared above me. Zetta sat down on my bed and shoved something under my eyes. "Look!" He was so excited that he didn't notice Kiboodl insinuate his way into his lap and commence drooling.

I freed one arm from under the pillow, fumbled for the object in his hand and held it up to my eye. "It's a...coin."

"Dammit, Salome! _Look_ at the damn coin!"

I angled the coin so it caught the light. "It's..."

"The new minting! The new minting came out! Look -I look great!"

I studied Zetta's profile on the blood-red coin. The artist had caught my love at his manic best, sharp profile interrupted by a broad, fang-flaunting grin. A line of flames edged the coin. I flipped it to the other side, revealing a surprisingly intricate etching of Zetta's castle.

"What do you think of the new motto?"

I glanced at the small words inscribed under Zetta's profile. "'In our... badass freaking Overlord we trust'. That's...succinct."

"You like?"

I was working my way back under the covers. "Yes. It's pretty."

I could hear the glower. "Salome!"

"It's very pretty."

"Be quiet. I don't want your opinion." I couldn't see him by then. "Hey -what's this dog doing here?" Kiboodl started yapping cheerily, glad to be noticed. "Magog's sake! I'm covered in floor soap!"

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Six hours later we were standing in the middle of the swamp, surrounded by demons that were swatting the vampiric mosquitoes away, waiting for the scouts to return and report where du Whiff had set up his last stand and arguing about how we could best raise funds for the latest monster breeding project.

Zetta shook his head. "I've already laid down heavy taxes on oxygen, I'm exacting 99 percent of the revenues from the conquered Netherworlds...I don't see what else I could do on the home front...Maybe I should go on Gypardy and try to drum up some money that way."

"Lord Zetta! Lord Zetta!" Sam whinnied through the swamp. In a couple seconds he splashed up, muddy to the helmet-rim. "We found du Whiff's army. He's stationed his tents on the back on an enormous turtle that lives in this swamp."

"Perfect. Now then, we'll just offer a sacrifice to the swamp and be on our way."

After we'd stood in a circle and watched the sacrifice (his name was Toulouse) go under the mud, hands flailing wildly and curses (as well as muck) on his lips, we trooped on.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Du Whiff was standing high on the turtle's shell, a clocktower stationed behind him and an academy on the turtle's head. Robespierre-Voltaire du Whiff was a tomato-shaped demon in a suit jacket of crushed cranberry velvet, black satin breeches, white silk stockings and patent leather buckle shoes. An impeccably white, softly curling wig rode his head and a complete set of Rosseau's works was tucked under his arm. Zetta stepped right up to the turtle hands on hips. The turtle was resolutely ignoring us.

"So this is how it ends, friend Zetta?"

"Yep."

"No argument of reasoned rhetoric can sway you from your path of savage, rampant, crimson chaos?"

"Mmmmmmm -no."

"You raise your ensanguined hands to throttle the very flower of my Netherworld?"

"You seem to know how this is gonna go. Let's get started."

"Alors!" He opened his volume of Rosseau and quickly scanned its contents. "I give you the might of the Noble Savage! Don't send your children to school! Structured time corrupts you!" Dark crimson scum oozed out of the book, poured to the ground and started rolling down the turtle's back towards us. It wasn't the sort of scum you wanted to let touch you.

Zetta and I levitated; the soldiers started scrambling away from the scum, searching for some high ground. Zetta drew his sword, swooped down towards du Whiff, stabbed him, bounced off his head and swung around for a third attack which took down the clocktower. He glared down at the retreating troops. "Get your asses back here! _Fight_, my battle monkeys!"

I hovered up to his level. "Did that include me?"

"Yes, you're a battle monkey too, now help me _roast_ the turtle!"

I swung back down, taking the opportunity to tap Q towards the action with my foot. I didn't bother with my sword, just lifted the academy up on a tide of fire, sent it shooting up above the level of the trees, let it bounce a bit on alternating Mana flares, sent it spinning even higher and smiled with satisfaction as it came down a charred husk roughly the size and shape of a pinecone.

There was a blinding light from the top of the turtle. I whirled. It was a high level Mana attack, and I could tell it wasn't Zetta's (he prefers sulfur and brimstone). Du Whiff, arms thrown back and wide, was resonating with Mana power. At that exact instant, every one of his soldiers on the field toppled over, dead.

"That's not a bad move," Zetta said.

"Merci," du Whiff puffed.

"Let me guess -you have just stolen all the combined Mana from your soldiers? It killed them, of course. You might've let them give it voluntarily. Oh wait, they're not that loyal to you. _No one's_ loyal to you."

"Everyone," du Whiff huffed, "is loyal to power. And now -THE POWER IS ALL MINE!"

I grimaced and looked over at Zetta. "Can we just end this?"

"I kind of want to see how powerful he is now. Come on, du Whiff! Let's see what you can do."

"I can do THIS." He levitated.

Zetta glanced over at me. "Clap politely, Salome."

"And I can do THIS." He zoomed backwards through the air.

"Okay. This is getting boring."

"And I can do THIS!" And with that, he raised his arms, levitated the enormous turtle, and threw it at Zetta.

"Oh..." said Zetta.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Zetta!" I screamed. "ZETTA!"

The turtle blinked, slightly bewildered, up at me from the self-induced crater it was sitting in. "BWAAA-hahahahahahahaha!" said du Whiff.

I had one of those automatic reactions. It wasn't deliberated. I swear. Just on instinct I shot du Whiff higher up into the air, sent him ricocheting among the treetops, brought him slamming face first into the mud, let him get up, dove at him with my sword, cut him one way, cut him another way, cut him in a move that involved the sixth dimension, sent him _back_ into the air and brought him back down, right onto the tip of my sword.

Yech.

I dashed towards the turtle (where were the battle-monkeys _now_? Ah, they'd all run. They'd be killed later. All of them.), skidding down into the crater. All I saw was turtle carapace. "Zetta! ZETTA!"

The turtle blinked slowly at me.

I topped off the day by sending the sixty ton turtle into the air too. It surged up, over the treetops, into the clouds. I don't know where it landed. I didn't hear a crash, so maybe it landed on some distant planet.

Not that I frankly cared. I was curled up next to my Overlord, listening for a heartbeat. Or a pulse. Of course, given the fact that he didn't bleed, it didn't make much sense for him to have either. I tried to feel for a breath. Nothing.

I leaned back into a semi-upright position to look at him. Zetta was sunk about half a foot into the mud, his hair sputtering slightly. His eyes were closed, but he had a pronounced scowl on his face.

And he wasn't breathing. In case you hadn't caught that the first time.

I screamed again, one of those screams where it isn't just your voice screaming, it's your soul.

"Whew! Oh my _gosh_, Salome! What's going _on_ here? I could hear you halfway across the cosmos."

I whipped around and stared blankly at the hulk of Valvoga which had appeared about fifteen yards away. Then I whipped around again and buried my face in my hands. Then I whipped around a third time and shouted angrily, "Do you know_ any_ resurrection spells?"

Micky looked somewhat surprised. "Well, Ophelia does the healing. That's why you've got to defeat her first. If you go after Dryzen and me, and one of us gets defeated, she just cures us right up again, and then we do our Delta Ragnarok attack and _smash_ your party."

I tried to sort out his little speech. "Ophelia's spell can bring you back up to fighting when you're moonlighting as the final boss?"

"That's about right. We're very grateful for Ophelia."

"A lot of good that does me!"

Micky drew back a bit in alarm. "_Gee_, Salome, what's wrong with you? I've never seen you so _combative_ before."

I couldn't speak, so scared and angry and frustrated I was just glaring and breathing hard.

"Hey-" Micky leaned forward. "What's that thing down in the mud there. It looks like-"

There was a loud, protracted gasp from Micky. "ZETTA!" he wailed. "Oh, _Zetta_! Oh my gosh, what are we gonna _do_?"

"I don't know _what_ to do!" I screamed back.

"Well, this is good news," Ophelia said pleasantly.

"GRAAA ha ha! Take his Netherworld, Micky! TAKE IT!" suggested Dryzen the dragon head.

"Be _quiet_, you guys!" Micky retorted frettishly. "We've got to help _Zetta_!"

I was crying with frustration. I don't cry a lot, and it always frightens me when I'm pushed to that point. I clenched my fists, blood from my palms running into my nails, raging that, for all my resources to kill people, I had no power to save the one I loved.

"Oh...oh..." fretted Micky. "Ophelia, try healing him."

"Well..." said Ophelia.

I glared at the talking head, furious with her and furious with myself for daring to hope it would work.

A white light radiated out from Ophelia, forming graceful geometric patterns and feathery wings. It glided down into the crater and onto Zetta's chest. I leaned forward, eyes dilated.

_Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep,_ went the spell.

The light swooped back into Ophelia. "Well, that's that," she said complacently. "I tried. I can't work miracles, you know."

I stared at her, my last source of hope that had entirely let me down. Then I slumped forward, hiding my face in his chest. His skin felt clammy, lifeless.

"_No-o-o-o!"_ wailed Micky, his voice quickly devolving into sobs. "Zetta, don't _go-oh-ho-ho!_"

"YAY, a funeral!" observed Dryzen. "Is there going to be a wake? BOOZE, BRAAH-HA-HA-HAAAAA!"

"Zetta!" sobbed Micky, "don't go! Stay with us forever, Zetta!"

I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek against chilly skin. Zetta was my world. If he was dead, the last thing I wanted was to be alive.

I flinched as a cold rain drop struck the bare skin on my back. "_Phhhhh_wubbbbbbb!" went Micky's nose into his handkerchief.

"So," I said dully, not looking, not opening my eyes, "is this the end?"

"Hell, no," said a squashed sort of voice. "I am not... going to be killed... by a giant...turtle..."

I jerked up off of him, staring amazedly into his face. His eyes were open.

Micky, not being close enough to hear a thing, was still going at it. "Zetta... you were...you were a _great_ Overlord... No one could indiscriminately slaughter like you could..."

"Salome-" Zetta was still unflattening his voice. "How dare you think I was killed by a turtle. How_ dare_ you think I was killed by a TURTLE."

"You weren't breathing-"

"Only wimps need to breathe."

"I will never," Micky avowed, "forget our times together: shooting planet pool...and...and...we must have done something other than shoot pool..."

"MURDER AND PLUNDER!" Dryzen recollected.

"Well...that was mostly _Zetta_. I sorta hung back..."

"There was the time you kidnapped King Drake's security blanket," Ophelia recalled.

"Oh yeah..."

"Zetta-" I was whispering between kisses.

"Anyway," Micky continued, "your brilliance shall not go forgotten, Zetta! We will erect a grand edifice to your magnificence."

"AFTER WE TAKE OVER YOUR NETHERWORLD! BWAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"This... is great, Salome, but _let_ me get up."

I stopped nuzzling his neck and backed off. A bit.

"Future generations will always remember!" Micky bellowed. "The sublime, the ineffable Zetta! Today will be an interdimensional holiday always in your honor!"

"AMEN, MICKY!"

Zetta was getting to his feet, looking wearily in Valvoga's direction.

"And I - I will always remember how you've inspired me - challenged me to be the very best despot I could be - my guiding star at night - my beacon in a stormy sea - my -ZETTA! Zetta, oh my gosh, Zetta you're alive!"

"Damn," said Ophelia.

"WAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!" bawled Dryzen.

"Of _course_ I'm alive!" Zetta bellowed. "I'm a _freakin' Overlord!_ Do you think any halfwit Minor Overlord and his giant turtle could take me down? By the way-" He glanced around. "What happened to the French soufflé and his pet paper weight?"

I was comfortably snuggled back up against his chest. "I... took care of them."

Zetta's arm around my waist tightened a bit. "Salome! Blasting Overlords is _my_ territory!"

"You were indisposed."

"Yeah, well, I'm plenty disposed now!"

I gave him a beseeching look. "Don't be angry just because I did what you've trained me to do."

"Hmph."

"You would've loved to watch."

"...Maybe."

Micky sniffled. "Oh, Zetta. This is touching, it really is."

"No, it isn't. It's muddy and disgusting...and cold and _wet_ and-"

"And we get to kill all the soldiers as punishment when we get back to camp," I reminded him.

"Hmph. There's that."

Micky sighed. "Whew! I'm glad _that's_ settled. I don't know what I'd_ do_ if Sufferoth stayed the most powerful Overlord."

Zetta looked up sharply. "Huh?"

"Don't you _know_, Zetta? Everyone's laying bets on whether or not you'll take on Sufferoth."

"They shouldn't bother. Of course I will. What does the big man himself say about it?"

"Well, you know Sufferoth. He doesn't talk to us much. He stays locked up in his mansion hiding from his rabid fans."

"True. Well, Micky, thanks for your...

...dammit, you weren't any help at all."

"I'm just glad you're all right, Zetta."

"You shame me! I am always all right!"

"Yeah, okay. Well, we'll see you two later."

"BWAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAAAAA!"

Once we were alone, Zetta allowed himself to sigh tiredly. "Damn, have to watch out for that Mana-sucking move. Damn, I should've _expected_ it!"

"I don't see why. I don't think anyone would."

"Yeah, well. Let's head back to the camp. I need a killing spree. And a bath. And a Blud-Lite. Let's go."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I had just wrenched Sqiqq out of the Eighth Dimension and was running my hands through his feathers, looking for injuries, when I heard Valvoga crash into the front foyer (again). Kitt and Kiboodl started yapping, so I gave each of them a dragon tooth to chew on. Then I sat up and looked around, making sure the Little Red Torture Chamber was clean and bloodstain-free. Excellent. We were going to convert it into another fridge. I got to my feet and, Kiboodl trailing devotedly at my heels, Kitt rippling across the walls, wearily started my way back to my bedroom. It had been a long day, executions, blighting and monster training, none of it helped by the fact that around noon, Zetta accidentally locked the sun into place during a complicated spell and couldn't get it moving again for six and a half hours. I was dragging my feet down a high hallway that overlooked the foyer when I heard, from below, Zetta sharply demand, "So what?"

"Well, we just thought you should know." Micky frowned. "Sufferoth himself said that you were going soft."

"What the hell? I'm getting stronger every day, and the bastard knows it."

I heard Ophelia speak up. "He said it's not the force of your power he doubts. He wonders if you'll even have the will to fight him when it comes to blows."

"_What!?"_

Micky sighed. "Zetta...we're not sure how to put it..."

"I AM," boomed Dryzen.

Up in the gallery, I heard a long silence.

Micky sighed again. "She's a _human_, Zetta."

Silence.

Micky spoke. "I don't agree with Sufferoth...not entirely... but he_ is_ the Ultimate Overlord."

Silence.

Micky went on. "It can't be _good_ for an Overlord. I mean -you're always telling me I should stop being so _nice_. And you and Salome... that definitely qualifies as, er, well, pleasant."

"Are you saying I'm _weak_?"

"NO, nononononononoNO, Zetta. Just...eh...You want to be, er, careful..."

"_Careful?"_

"I -er..."

"HE'S SAYING YOU'RE GOING SOPPY!" Dryzen clarified.

Up in the gallery, I suddenly noticed my heart was hammering. I wasn't -scared?

The foyer below was lit with the dark red light of Zetta's Mana. "I'll show you _soppy_!"

CRASH.

When Zetta came up later, I was still standing in the gallery, lost in thought. I snapped around to face him as soon as he entered. "Zetta-"

He frowned impatiently. "What? Why are you still up?"

"I-" I was waiting here to whine at you to tell me you love me? No, I told myself firmly. _No._ Besides, he'd made it clear he loved me. As for our love making him weak...

"It's nothing," I told him. I made myself smile as I came over. "I just wanted to see you again before I went to sleep."

Zetta sighed, still impatient. "Right here."

I'd had my arms around his neck, about to kiss him. His tone brought me up short. "Is something wrong?" Of course something was wrong. I knew exactly what was wrong. I stood there, hoping he'd tell me.

He shook his head, face grim. "Nothing important."

My heart plummeted.

"Damn, Salome, get that miserable look off your face. It was _nothing_."

Maybe I just had to trust him on this. "...All right." I gave him what was intended to be a lingering kiss, but he broke away after just a few moments.

"Night," he said, giving me a quick glance.

"Right," I said, watching him stalk away down the hall.

After another hour of restless thought, I'd succeeded in reassuring myself. I knew better than anyone that Zetta took cues only from himself. Still, the talk with Micky might have rattled him. But Zetta couldn't really be afraid of growing weak. Even in the short centuries I'd known him, he'd gained immense power. I couldn't see how anyone could imagine that loving me would undo all of that hard work.

Besides, I loved Zetta with my entire being. How could such a consuming love destroy anyone, let alone him?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If I'd thought the war-effort had been stepped up previously I was due for enlightenment. Zetta aligned all the vast resources of himself and his Netherworld to build an army strong enough to topple Sufferoth. But at the same time, he stopped teaching me. I'd stared at him, agog, when he'd broken the news. "You can't- You can't have taught me _everything_ you know."

"Of course not. But I need that time to train the troops. They need it a helluva a lot more than you do."

I nodded. "That makes sense. Though...I certainly don't want to stop my education where we are."

He waved his hand. "You can read the spell books."

"Zetta, you know I hate the damn spell books."

"Maybe after I've crushed Sufferoth, we'll get back to that. In the meantime, I need you to battle through the Netherworld. I need some better items to reincarnate the troops with.

"Of course." That certainly wasn't a problem. I smiled at him as I left.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Zetta! Zetta!" I'd spotted him from the foyer and had to levitate three stories to where he was, en route to one of his interrogation chambers.

"What?" he demanded.

I flinched at the harsh tone. "I haven't seen you for a week."

"That's because I've been out in the_ field_, Salome."

"I know that. I just wanted to say 'hello'."

"Hi." He started moving on.

I caught his arm. "Where are you going?"

I could feel his muscles stop just short of wrenching his arm out of my grasp. "I have one of Sufferoth's top henchmen under the lightbulb, and he's not going to write out his Overlord's secrets without about six hours' worth of persuasion, so I need to be going."

I nodded. "I understand. Can I see you later tonight?"

"Sure, sure."

Later that night when I was admitted to his study, he looked up from his map of the cosmos (painted in varying shades of Gorgon blood and bile). "Yeah?"

"I'm here."

"Oh." He glanced at the map again. "Do you have a question?"

"No," I said, a little annoyed.

He looked annoyed likewise. "Then why are you bothering me?"

"My being here is_ bothering_ you?"

He threw down the map and shook his head. "No. Long day. Did you need something?"

"I just wanted to be with you."

"Oh." He sighed wearily. "Whee. Here we are."

"Do you have to be so sarcastic?"

"What do you _want_ me to be? I've spent the last week failing to smoke out Sufferoth's spies -I come home and have another spy that's proving impossible to grill -and now you're standing here not telling me why you're up here. Yay. I live for moments like this."

I bent my entire will toward being gentle and sympathetic. "I'm sorry. I've missed you."

"Yeah..." He looked abstractedly into the bonfire. "I could've used your help this week."

I couldn't keep some of the acid out of my voice. "Is that your way of saying you missed me too?"

"I didn't really have the time."

"Thanks."

"Salome, don't take it like that."

"Take it some other way?" I pressed my lips together and shook my head, immediately contrite. But still hurt. "I'm sorry, Zetta. I know you've been busy."

"Not to shove you out the door, Salome, but I'm still busy."

"Of course." I walked back towards the door, hesitated, then came back to kiss him goodnight. He smiled vaguely, turned away and flicked the map back into view.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Some time -quite a long time later, when I hadn't seen Zetta for nearly a month except for random sightings around the castle- I was awakened in the middle of the night by an explosion coming from his bedroom. I sat up in bed, trying to decide if this was the sort of explosion that would have my love hooting with glee or spread-eagled on the floor never to get up again.

Of course I got up. I was _in love_.

Into the dressing gown, out the door, up the complicated series of stairways, right to the bedroom doors (blood-red; carved with elongated, anguished faces). I knocked. "Zetta? Are you conscious?"

The doors snapped open. Zetta leaned out, gave me a hearty one on the mouth, said, "Everything's great! I've just fused the DNA of an elephant and a porcupine!" and snapped the doors shut again.

Well. There didn't seem to be much point to knocking again. I made my way back to bed.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

When Zetta was abroad for six weeks testing his new cavalry of porcuphants in King Drake's Netherworld, I tried calling him on the hellephone. I usually got Q, who, in these trying times, was doubling as his receptionist. She normally told me he was out. At first I swore_ her_ out, demanding that she stop lying and put Zetta on the line. No good. Apparently he was out.

Occasionally I got him first thing in the morning.

"Zetta! You're here!"

"Yeah."

"How are things going?"

"_Excellent! _We're shredding Drake's defenses! I'd consider claiming his Netherworld if it didn't seem to confer patheticness on its ruler."

"That's good. So-"

"Oh! How are things going with the road-building project?"

"Fine."

"They're using the highest quality skulls for it?"

"Yes, Zetta, yes."

"Good. So... ... ..."

"I miss you."

"... ... Yeah."

"Do you...miss me?"

"Of course."

"When do you think you'll be back?"

"Prolly in a week or two."

"So...when you're back, how about we go subjugate all the demons in the countryside? Raise taxes, threaten to take away their children. Just the two of us."

"That's not a bad idea. But as soon as I get back, I have to work on the weapons development. If we can get some good, solid tanks made, it'll really improve our odds. And I've captured a lot of Drake's soldiers. I'll need some time to...accustom them to the change in loyalty. Oh, and I've got this great new move that is going to shake the universe's foundations as soon as I get it perfected!"

"...Oh. I see."

"But hey, why don't you do the countryside thing alone? You're powerful enough."

"Zetta! I like to spend some time with _you_."

"Excuse me? You want to help with the tank production?"

"_No_! Zetta, I want to spend some time with you that doesn't involve the Netherworld or... cosmic domination or-"

"What?"

"You know I support you in every respect, but Zetta! I haven't seen you for weeks! We haven't been just together for what, three months?"

"Tch! Salome-"

"_Well?"_

"Salome, that sort of thing...just put it on hold for now, all right? I'm busy enough as it is."

"So_ I'm_ going to be what you drop?"

"Fine, Salome, fine. We'll spend some time together when I get back. But don't expect a boating party on the Styx or anything. I don't have time to spare."

"That's all right. It's enough that...It's enough that you even try."

"Right, right. I have to get going now. I'll talk to you later."

"Sure."

"Oh -! Salome-"

"Yes?"

"Could you get to work on that countryside squeezing before I get back? That'd be great."

"...Sure."

When he got back, I was out squeezing the countryside dry. After a week, I got back to the palace just in time to see him leave to try out the new tanks. He gave me a wide grin as I blankly watched him troop off, then I went up to my bedroom and cried.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Let's talk."

Zetta jumped and glanced over his shoulder. "You here? Where's the preamble?"

I raised my eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"The 'I've missed you, where have you been, can we spend some time together' stuff."

I tried to keep my face impassive but ended up with a narrow-eyed frown.

Zetta shrugged. "You haven't greeted me any other way in ages."

"And you can't imagine _why_?" I asked.

I'd found him in one of the lower dungeons, just exiting a torture chamber where he'd been "administrating". He continued walking down the dark stone hallway. I followed quickly, trying to keep in step, the cold air pushing against me.

Zetta shrugged complacently. "You miss me. Okay. Hey, did the Harpies arrive with their tribute yet or-"

"Zetta!" I shouted. "Stop thinking about the damn Netherworld for one damn_ minute_!"

He stopped walking abruptly, staring at me as if I'd just suggested that he tie a lead weight around his ankle and go for a swim. "Are you crazy? Why?"

"Because I want to tell you that I can't stand this anymore. I hate being away from you for weeks on end, and then you come back and ignore me-"

"I'm not_ ignoring_ you! I'm right here, talking to you-"

"You keep shoving me away so you can work on the Netherworld-"

He stared at me incredulously. "Magog's sake, Salome, I'm an _Overlord_! What the hell am I supposed to think about? It's my job."

"I _know_ that, but is there any room in you for being something other than an Overlord?"

"What the hell? What the freakin' hell are you talking about? I'm a demon, I'm an Overlord, don't you get it?"

"And what am I?"

"You're..." He frowned, looking at me. "You're my disciple."

"And that's it?"

He grimaced. "Salome, don't start-"

"Don't start? Don't start telling you what you're doing to me?"

"Dammit, Salome."

"Well?"

"Don't you think this is pretty selfish of you?"

I drew back. "What?"

"You always say you support me."

"I do support you!"

"Well, here I am, amassing the power for the fight of my life, and you throw _this_ at me!"

"Zetta, it's not a 'this' I'm talking about. I'm talking about myself!"

"Which you what, suddenly can't take care of?"

I caught my breath in my teeth. "Do you want to see if I _can_, Zetta?"

His eyes were blazing with exasperated anger. "_What_ the hell are you talking about?"

I glanced down, irate and fierce and firm and miserable. "I already told you: I'm talking about myself." I looked up, forcing steadiness into my eyes and voice. "I'm saying I hate being left alone all the time. I hate hearing you say that I have to put being with you on hold. I hate hearing you say that you have another job for me to do! I hate feeling like you can do just fine with or without me! I hate feeling like I'm just some powerful human weapon in your army! Is that what I've turned back into? Just your weapon?"

"_Salome-"_ he said, with a frustrated growl in his voice. And then he didn't say anything. And then he finally said, "I'm an Overlord. Don't you understand that?"

"Nobody understands it better than I do, Zetta."

We stared at each other a long time, each willing the other to just give up some damn ground.

"I'm leaving."

"What?"

I tightened my jaw to keep my mouth from shaking. "I'm leaving."

He put his hands on his hips. "Guess what, Salome, you _can't._ You're my vassal."

"I damn well can. I'm not a demon. And you -aren't even my real Overlord."

He flinched, and his eyes blazed. "Where are you going? Back to hell?"

"No."

"Then _where_? Where do you think you can go?"

I hadn't planned this, but I'd gotten an idea nonetheless. "You can find out on your own. When you have the time."

"Salome!"

"What?" I drew myself up. "What are you going to say that will keep me here?" I tried to keep my eyes hard, but he had to see I was struggling against hope.

And his face hardened. "Nothing," he said. "Get going, if that's what you really want."

My eyes went wide. He was just giving up? He wasn't even going to fight to keep me? I would've been happier if he'd locked me in a dungeon just to keep me here and try to reason with me.

Or maybe...maybe I wouldn't.

I turned away and walked down the hall, the cold still pushing against me. Every step away from Zetta seemed to make me colder. On the landing, I deliberately turned back to look at him. I didn't hide my pain.

"Get going!" he shouted. "You want out, so get the hell out!"

I got out. Right then and there, I cast my transportation spell.

I never saw that Netherworld again.


	7. Chapter 7

7

I'd never before traveled through the cosmos without Zetta, but the plummeting sensation of stars streaking and bleeding together and the head-splittingly bright light were only on the periphery of my mind. Somehow, it was still back with Zetta, trying to find the right argument, the right statement that would make him come back to me. And at the same time, my mind was racing ahead, trying to plan.

Outwardly, I was quite serene as I landed, my spell bursting apart in a sphere of white light and falling celestial feathers (odd... why would I have feathers?). Aside from hell, this was my first experience of a Netherworld other than Zetta's. The differences were both vast and significant.

The sky was gray green, more like a suspended sea than anything else, constantly shifting waves untouched by any sunlight. Through some of the shallows (I suppose they would be shallows) I could see the muted light of stars. The terrain was rocky shale with slender, elegantly bent trees and small shrubs. Far in the distance I saw a herd of karkadaans, fierce unicorns that would sooner rip a virgin's throat out than lay their heads in her lap.

The road to the citadel was directly in front of me, a broad street paved with crushed bones, lined on each side with pillars that bore corpses in varying stages of decay. Far, far away in the distance, I could make out the citadel: tall, slender and black, with sharply pointed spires.

I started walking. The closer I got to the citadel, the more built up the surroundings grew. I found myself entering a powerful capital, quite as powerful as Zetta's. By the time I was a mile away from the citadel, I'd already been accosted six times by sentries. Now they were all curled up at their posts, waiting for some healers to wander by.

And now a full phalanx of sword-masters tramped up in front of me. "What is your business here?" their captain asked suspiciously. No blame there. He_ should_ be suspicious.

I decided (pretty much on a whim -I was hardly thinking) that diplomacy was called for. "I desire an audience with Humbaba, Lord of Fear."

"How nice," the captain said, not at all nicely, and kept his spearhead leveled resolutely at my heart.

"Step aside, please," I said, lifting my left hand. Soft Mana light pulsed out from it. In a second, the light had drifted forward, branched out, and was pushing the phalanx apart and away from me. "Or would you rather die?"

In general, demons make interesting vassals. On one hand, they are bound to follow their Overlord no matter what. On the other, their devotion is rarely voluntarily and most of them dislike their Overlord as much as any other tyrannical despot. Sometimes more. It didn't surprise me that these demons didn't have Humbaba's best wishes at heart, not with about sixty pounds of Mana pushing each in his chest. I went through the front gates up to the citadel.

The front steps were both wide and tall, and they were covered with smooth glass. A broad carpet swept down the center, but either side ran continuously with gallons of red blood. I looked down, tempted to tap the glass with my heel. Only half and inch or so could be separating me from that gruesome current.

I paused there, waiting. Maybe it would happen this quickly. Maybe Zetta would come rushing in, breathing fire and demanding I come back. Maybe I'd finally given him a reason to fight for something other than the cosmos. I stood there for only a few moments before I resigned myself.

I could wait. But I had to be prepared for waiting...maybe a long time.

I stepped up.

There was a white marble slab at the top of the stair, an ideal dais for the Overlord to perch on and inspire the masses. I walked over it and into the citadel, the dark ceiling shutting away most of the bleak gray light. Two things happened as I stepped in: the interior was flooded with bright, yellow-green light, and the front doors swung gracefully shut.

Ten or so demons were stationed in the front hall, all around a sweeping staircase that branched off into two spiralling wings. The rest of the interior was decorated with black walls and silver-gray tiling. It was mostly empty space.

The demons just watched me. I stepped forward and demanded, voice ringing through the tall chamber, "Where is the Lord of Fear?"

"I've felt your Mana presence the moment you entered my domain," a voice said, its depth reverberating through the air. The demon sentries shimmered away -out of existence or just to some other room, I don't know- and a column of clouds appeared in front of me. The clouds condensed, coalesced, and the Lord of Fear was before me.

Humbaba was about eleven feet tall, a hulking demon with heavy forearms, a hairy face and a blunt, bear-like profile. Two horns twisted away on either side of his head, another arching from between his eyes. He wore all black, a long, flame-edged robe, a high collar and black gloves.

"Ah," he said, blinking intense green eyes, "I have heard of this swanlike beauty, this little human who plays with Overlords. You _must_ be Salome. Tell me, why has your master sent you to me? Is he interested in dying on the steps of my citadel as he tries to steal my Netherworld?"

"Lord Zetta isn't interested in your Netherworld."

"Oh?"

"And he didn't send me."

"What? Aren't you under his command?"

"Not anymore."

Humbaba threw back his head and laughed. "Oh-HO! A thankless job, wasn't it?" I closed my teeth on an angry retort and let him continue. "So, you've slithered out from under his thumb. Now what? Are you in need of a new Overlord?"

I lowered my eyelashes, gazing up at him from the corners of my eyes. "I need a new Netherworld."

"I don't blame you, my dear. Zetta isn't known for his...eh, pleasant qualities, shall we say? That his followers don't all commit suicide is largely beyond me."

I pressed my lips together, not wanting to hear this fat monster speak of Zetta that way.

Humbaba misread the motive behind my expression. "I don't blame you for being angry. And now you've come to me, the most powerful Overlord aside from Sufferoth himself. My dear, I'm flattered. I am. And you...well, I can't say I'm looking for any students. I certainly have no intention of giving my secrets away. But that doesn't mean we couldn't find a place for you here. How about that?" He extended one paw to touch my cheek.

I reached up and broke his fingers.

"I know my place," I told him.

"Interesting," he commented, voice far smoother than his movements as he jerked the hand back. His eyes were narrowed. "And what do you say your place is?"

"On the throne of your Netherworld."

He laughed harshly. "You humans are getting ambitious."

I lifted my chin. "When I kill you, I won't be _just_ a human any longer. I'll be-" I paused, fully realizing it myself, "-an Overlord."

"No," he said pleasantly. "Because you won't be killing me. I'm going to grind you into the grout between my floor tiles. Got that?"

I put my left foot back, bracing myself. "You're the one with the broken hand."

I fully expected the first wall of Mana that came slamming towards me, but not the double-headed battle-ax he withdrew and swung towards my shoulders. I wrenched my body sideways to safety and kicked off into the air with a sword attack. I came down riding a flume of fire. The attack, while powerful, didn't do much, maybe dented his ego marginally. He swung around and caught me on the back of the shoulders with one of his blades. I bled, but my Mana was strong enough to keep it from penetrating too deep. The battle was still early.

I turned, feeling warm blood slide down my back, watching Humbaba. Did he even guess how much I had at stake in this battle? Granted, I didn't have to claim his Netherworld, but I refused to fly off and serve under any Overlord than Zetta. I guess I was giving myself no choice.

Humbaba swung down and sent his ax-blade crashing into the tile floor, digging about three inches deep. The entire citadel started shaking. I jumped into the air and began dodging falling masonry. Meanwhile, intensely bright light was shooting out of the crack Humbaba had made.

In about as much time as it took me to think I wonder wha-, a seven-headed dragon came shooting up through the floor. It grabbed me in one coil and-

-well, undoubtedly the idea was that it was going to bite my head off or breath fire-

-so I'd already started building an attack in midair-

-and the dragon's weakness would _obviously_ be ice-

-but it turned out it wasn't ice, it was wind-

-so by the time I got around to casting Omega wind, the dragon's fangs were about three inches from my throat-

-which was fine because I was able to target the spell directly into its stomach.

The dragon dropped me, whizzing away with all the swiftness of a cannonball. I chased after it, shooting forward and impaling it like a shrike. I nearly broke my arm as the dragon abruptly fell, but I cleared my sword in time. I spun around to see Humbaba's ax whirring through the air towards me. I twitched to the left and flinched as it swung past and, boomerang-like, flew back into Humbaba's working hand.

"Interesting," Humbaba said again. "I'd heard you were quite as powerful as Lord Zetta, but I hadn't believed it."

I laughed. "No one is as powerful as Zetta. Not even Sufferoth will be strong enough." I tossed him up on a flare-sphere, knocking his head against the ceiling. He responded by throwing a rope of Mana around me and swinging me around the room like a yo-yo. I broke out, still hurtling with inertia, did a backflip and rammed my sword through Humbaba's midriff. He used one arm to wrench my sword out and toss me to the far end of the room on a spear of lightning.

I glanced with vague interest at Humbaba's bright fuschia blood before another lightning spear connected with my chest, throwing me back into the stone wall of the citadel. I took a deep breath, my Mana swelling and pushing the spear out of me. There wasn't any blood (it hadn't even really been a physical attack), but I was dizzy and unprepared as he rushed me with his ax.

I slunk low at the last moment and stabbed high, then kicked him up into the air and followed with one of Zetta's favorite moves, swooping up on a wave of Mana and splicing him six ways.

"That was cute," Humbaba puffed as we landed on opposite ends of the front hall. I watched him bleed from several slashes on his body. How deep? My Mana was weakening in the struggle, but how about his?

I grimaced. He was the Overlord. I was the human.

But I was never going to back down.

I jumped forward, repeating the attack, catching him by surprise. And while we were about forty feet up, I shoved my sword through his mouth, through the brain and out the other end.

He dropped like a stone, pulling me with him. We landed with a bloody crash, his hand at my throat. I released a fireball into the wreckage of his face. His fingers clenched once, almost crushing my windpipe, then dropped limply to my shoulder, down my arm and to his side.

I didn't stare down at his body for a long moment, contemplating what I'd done. My battle wasn't over by far. I stood, pulling my sword out from him as I rose. I gave him one glance. In a way, killing Seedle had been far harder.

I used a bit of Mana to clean all the blood from my body and stop my neck from bruising. Then I strode outside.

It didn't surprise me that our duel had drawn a crowd outside the citadel. I looked down at a massive throng of demon warriors. I saw their faces shift to surprise as they saw me. I stepped onto the white marble dais.

"Good news. You have a new Overlord."

Then the riot started.

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As soon as the executions were over and order was established, I returned to my citadel to burn Humbaba's corpse. I torched him with a highly powerful Mana spell with enough energy to radiate out into the cosmos. I knew the other Overlords would feel it.

I hoped Zetta would feel it. I hoped he'd arrive to investigate. Even if he came as a competitor, at least he'd be here.

In any case, it let the Overlords know one of their kind had left them forever.

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I woke up the next morning and instantly closed my eyes again. I couldn't stand to look at the long, gray room with its hulking furniture; my skin seemed to tighten itself away from the strange, low-slung bed. After destroying a powerful Overlord and countless demons just yesterday, I somehow couldn't hide from the fact that I didn't want to be here.

Yet, I'd left my home for a reason, hadn't I? I didn't want to be back there either, not as things were.

_How do you feel this morning, Zetta? _I wondered. _As miserable as I do?_

_Or are you collecting that damn harpy tribute?_

He'd called me selfish. To his mind, I was deserting him when he needed me the most. And, quite possibly, I was. Remorse overwhelmed me like a poison. I wondered if he'd be strong enough to fight Sufferoth without my help.

Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe that would bring him back. Except-

I exhaled. I hated the idea of him being defeated just as much as he did.

I rolled over and slowly opened my eyes. I looked around the unfamiliar room.

Maybe he'd come for me today.

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I spent that morning appointing the leader of my demon masses, Q's equivalent. Asperis was a blonde healer who seemed willing (at least on the surface) to like me. She confided that Humbaba hadn't been much appreciated among the female soldiers, nor by the demons that ran the local orphanage. I could understand that.

(Meanwhile, most of the male soldiers seemed very eager to put their best feet forward.)

I was quite pleased by the amount of resources Humbaba had accrued. I'd never heard of him crusading much; his style had been to win wars on the defensive, and I couldn't say it hadn't worked. In all honesty, it didn't look like I'd have much to do beyond maintaining his infrastructure. Which was good, because my mind wasn't really on my new Netherworld. I wouldn't be able to really focus for about a month after I left Zetta.

And the only reason I achieved some measure of peace was because I found a way to assuage my guilt.

My first day as Overlord was spent in mechanically issuing orders (Zetta's negligence had at least taught me to administer independently of him) and internally flogging myself for deserting my love. Not that I was going to crawl back to him; I'd meant every word I'd said. But I couldn't stand the idea of his hard work and dreams crashing around him just because I'd left. It scared me to think what such a disaster might do to him.

I discovered a compromise that night. I thought long and hard how I could manage it without Zetta guessing. After all, he was gaining Mana power rapidly through conquest and study. Would he notice a bit more?

Yes. Did you guess it? That night, I lay down in bed and sent a small surge of my Mana across the cosmos directly into Zetta. I barely felt a thing.

I did it every night for a century.

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Meanwhile, I had a Netherworld to see to.

Even after the first day, I was still plagued by hotshot demons who wanted a chance at being Overlord. Lots of these I summarily executed. Some of them I labored to recondition and used as sub-commanders of my platoons. Every morning I worked the spells on the Netherworld that maintained it, not just the inhabitants but its structure as well. Every night I sent off a little more Mana to Zetta. I comforted myself with it. I'd left his Netherworld, but not his life, not his struggle to fulfill his wish.

Fairly early on I heard someone crashing into my front hall. My heart lifted and hammered in my chest -Zetta? No, I told myself. More likely it was Valvoga come to fret at me. Well, he might have news of Zetta. I got up from where I was drafting an order for anti-aircraft rifles, wizard capes and cowboy hats and stalked down to my foyer.

I came up short.

"Well, well, well," said Seedle.

I crossed my arms, belatedly wondering if it looked too defensive. "Have you come to offer your congratulations? Thanks. Get going."

"Yes and no, Salome," he replied, coming a bit closer across the foyer. "Congratulations from getting well out of Zetta's life. Congratulations to both of you. I've spoken to him. I'd say he extends his kindest regards, but he emphatically doesn't."

"Oh?" I asked, trying not to sound interested.

"I asked, 'How do you feel now that your disciple's won her first Netherworld on her first try?' Do you know what he said?"

"I don't see how I should."

"He said, 'I have no disciple. She's as good as dead.' Of course, he didn't take into account that you're _already_ dead, but the meaning of the statement was definitely there."

"Glad to hear it," I said coldly. "I'd hate to think Zetta was spending his time moping."

"I suppose so. Well, I've extended my congratulations. Now it's time to take you back to the Underworld." There was a shivering scrape as he drew his left katana.

I let my Mana envelop me. "You think you can drag me back into hell? Do you think you want to try?"

"You're no use to me as a spy here, Salome. I have plenty of those already. Besides, I really hate that we've left our acquaintance on such an unhappy note."

"Well, I don't. Stop deluding yourself that you could _ever_ be my Overlord."

He laughed. "You think-"

And I attacked without letting him tidy up his end of the conversation. I shot forward, sword drawn, blue rings of Mana gyrating around me. Seedle stabbed back as I hacked away, looking for an opening to his more vital organs. We broke apart, dripping blood, and then he flew into the air on an Omega wind. He came charging back, and before I could blink, four feet of steel had passed through my stomach. I gasped, pulling away, casting rapid healing spells into my system. Seedle took the opportunity to hit me with a fire attack. I fell to one knee, pushed off the knee and swung my sword at his neck. It connected but not nearly deep enough.

I spoke through the blood rattling in my throat. "Get out of here."

"You think you can make me, bitch?" He was about ten strides away from me, body angled at the hips, both swords out.

I laughed. "Well. Let's see."

I'd learned all of Zetta's attacks during my apprenticeship as well as the basic spells taught to all demon witches. But I'd picked up a few moves of my own, and this most powerful was my favorite. I cast a tide of dark Mana onto my sword blade and launched it at Seedle. He parried the sword (which was fine; that's what he was supposed to do). As steel struck steel, the dark Mana burst apart like a black fountain, forming a sphere around Seedle. Before he could move, intricate geometric patterns had laced the cage's rungs together. I lifted my hands, throwing the prison-ball into the air. Then I recovered my sword, kicked off into flight and stabbed through the heart of the sphere.

When the spell was over, Seedle had again flown. I wearily returned to ground, angry I hadn't succeeded in destroying him. I knelt on the tile, slowly healing the wide wound Seedle had made in my stomach and back.

_Thank you, Zetta,_ I thought, almost like a prayer. _If you hadn't rescued me from hell, Seedle would have found me, and I would have been too weak to fight him off a second time. _But I looked up sadly. There was no one there to receive my gratitude. According to Zetta, it ultimately had made no difference; for him I'd just died again.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After I'd been giving Zetta my Mana for about fifty years, I received news from Asperis that Sufferoth was dead. Zetta had fought a war with him that lasted six days, and on the seventh day, he'd dueled Sufferoth for twelve relentless hours. Later that day, Valvoga showed up, an enthusiastic Micky with news: no one could believe the power of Zetta's Mana. They were fairly sure he was the most powerful Overlord since Babylon. Zetta was maniacally happy, shooting around the cosmos, blowing up planets right and left to proclaim his supremacy.

Micky glanced sharply (sharply for Micky) at me. "You look... happy, Salome."

I toned down my radiant smile just a bit. "Well, I am. I've always wanted Zetta to be the Ultimate Overlord."

"Well, that's nice... Are you...going to make your peace with him?"

I looked away. "That's up to him."

"Oh," said Ophelia. "Well, I hope you're willing to wait awhile then. Zetta doesn't seem to pining for you, exactly."

"That's fine," I said arcticly.

"In fact...he never really talks about you at all."

"Would you like him to?" I asked. "If you want to hear what I'm up to, just come around and ask me."

"Hm hm hm," Ophelia laughed. "You need to work on being convincing."

Despite the fact that Zetta had won his battle, I kept sending him Mana. In a way, I think it was for my own benefit as much as his. Doing it meant I still had a share in Zetta's life; even if he never knew it, I had helped my love fulfill his wish.

Even if he'd never come back for me.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

One morning Asperis came to me at breakfast and announced I had a formal visitor. I raised my eyebrows. "Who?"

"Lady Tulip de Montmorency."

"And who is she?"

"The...well...ex-wife of King Drake the Third."

I nearly snorted into my orange slices. "King Drake was married?"

"It appears so."

"And to a woman named Tulip..." I trailed off, thinking this over. I shook my head. "What does she want?"

"She only says she wants an audience, Lady Salome."

"Hm." I wondered if she posed any threat. "What should I know about Lady Tulip?"

Asperis shrugged. "Not much is known about her. According to King Drake the Third, she's a cackling, cross-eyed, overweening witch."

"Well, that doesn't tell me much. Tell her I'll see her as soon as I finish breakfast." After all, this was my time, not hers.

When I walked into my receiving chamber, I found Lady Tulip waiting patiently. She was a slight demon of medium build with long white hair, pale skin and blue eyes. I looked her over with a bit of surprise. From all accounts, Drake wasn't even vaguely humanoid. That he'd married a normal demon was a bit...disturbing. "Why are you here?" I demanded, not bothering to ask if she'd had a pleasant trip.

Tulip bowed low. "Lady Salome." She had a devious voice. "I've been dying to meet you."

"You don't have to die," I said. "Unless you want to." And, because I was genuinely curious, I asked, "Why have you been dying to meet me?"

"Isn't it obvious?" she asked, eyes wide.

"...

...No."

"Well, you and I have both left our Overlords."

"Oh. You weren't your husband's sworn vassal?"

"No, not at all."

I couldn't help being a _bit_ inquisitive, not with all I'd heard about King Drake. "Why did you leave him?"

She gave me a bland look. "Do you really want to know?"

"I think so."

She shrugged. "I gave up. Just damn gave up. Couldn't take him anymore."

"Oh."

"It's just -there was no point even _trying_ anymore. It wasn't even worth it to the kid to try and stick it out."

I tried not to dwell too long on what their child might look like. "Well, that's very interesting. But what are you doing here?"

She opened her eyes wide. "Isn't it obvious?"

"_No."_

"I'll spell it out for you, dear. You're a human-"

"Actually," I interrupted her, "I'm an _Overlord_."

"Well, okay. But the point is, you have the obscene level of Mana, but you weren't born a demon. But_ I_ am a legitimate demon."

"How_ nice_."

"_Thank_ you. Anyway, the way I see it is, wouldn't it be mutually beneficial if we...joined forces?"

"I doubt it."

"No! Wait, listen! We could rule this Netherworld together! Two strong, independent women that have left the oppressive rule of their men and struck out to carve an empire of their own!"

I frowned down at her. "Why don't you...write it up as a novel?"

She opened her eyes wide. "You're refusing my offer?"

I leaned forward. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Huh! Are all human women as bitchy as you?"

I looked at my nails. "I picked it up in the afterlife."

She pointed her own red nail at me. "Fine! You wait. You aren't the only woman who can claim a Netherworld. We may meet again, Lady Salome."

I turned away. "I don't have time for this. Would you like to leave or should my guards help you along?"

She lifted her chin. "I can _help_ myself."

I'm sure she could.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Lady Salome- Lady Salome! Oh my Gog, who's the guard on duty? Jericho? Jericho, I need your help I -why are you shaking your head, Lady Salome?

...Uh, your assistance isn't necessary, Jericho. Be on your way.

...Lady Salome?

...Lady Salome, open your eyes. It's me, Asperis. Sh...Should I get you anyth... Here, let me help you onto your bed. Is that all right? Are you comfortable?

Do you need anything? Water? Let me get you some water.

Here it is. Drink slowly. Is that better?

Lady Salome?

Can you open your eyes? Good, oh thank Gog, good.

...Lady Salome, you look...

I'll get something to wipe your face with. What's...

...what is...

...Is your...

Is that your blood on the floor-?

Here, I've got a wash cloth. You'll feel better. See, you're looking stronger already. But...

...why are you so weak?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I was scared.

I sat alone in my bedroom staring feverishly at the far wall, as if the force of my gaze would bring all my answers to light.

After an hour, I remembered to send some Mana to Zetta. I sent it. My heart was hammering.

_Just stop. He doesn't need it anymore. He doesn't need you anymore. You are of no use to anyone in the cosmos._

So why don't I keep sending off my Mana? Why prolong a painful existence?

Why not die again?

I bowed my head. Unknowingly, I had made my choice the first time I sent off my Mana. I would die again, the blood that had hemorrhaged out of me made that clear. But...

_Stupid! He doesn't want you! He doesn't need you! Why are you killing yourself just so he can be happy?_

I held myself, remembering my past, where he had saved my life and made me so happy. To me, it only seemed fitting that my Mana, my lifeforce, should eventually go entirely to him.

But I'd left him hating me. Maybe he still hated me. Maybe he always would.

My throat constricted.

_Please...don't let me die without telling Zetta...that I love him._

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Though violently painful, my early attacks were brief and infrequent, over so quickly that sometimes I was able to ignore the blood pouring out of me. I continued to bolster my Netherworld and army, not daring to exhibit any sign of weakness. Zetta had been right. An Overlord was only as mighty as his Mana. If word got out that I was ill, I could expect revolts as well as invasions from the other Overlords.

Asperis was so good to me and kept quiet. I asked what she imagined she might be getting out of this.

Asperis shook her head. "Just remember me when you're well again."

Getting well again. I toyed with that idea in my mind for a short while, cherished it as a possibility. But as the attacks accelerated, I grew impatient with wasting thought on impossibilities. Even if I'd stopped sending off my Mana, there was no guarantee I'd be able to gain it back. And while I was still much more powerful than many of the Overlords out there (maybe only Zetta himself was more powerful), I felt weaker every day.

Did I want Zetta to know how I was killing myself for him? No. I never wanted him to see me so helpless. But I didn't want to die without seeing him again.

Eventually I came to a decision. I stopped casting the spells that maintained my Netherworld and hoarded all of my Mana to myself. I made no moves for conquest and watched as slowly the margins of my empire fell into disrepair. My soldiers were aware of it on some level, but I was still strong enough to put down their revolts.

For now.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You've been replaced," Ophelia said. I looked sharply up.

Micky plaited all twenty of his fingers together and put on a pouty face. "It's not like_ that_, Ophelia. You know it isn't."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded. Micky had dropped by to give me a signed copy of his latest book (_Cocatrice Soup for the Overlord's Soul_), and Ophelia had opened her smug little gawp out of nowhere.

"The word is," Ophelia purred, "Zetta has a new apprentice."

"She's _not_ his apprentice," Micky said quickly, probably noticing how rigid my face had gone. "Pram is...well, she's an Oracle. Zetta isn't_ teaching_ her."

"She's just messing with his mind," Ophelia cooed.

"Not like_ that_!" Micky repeated, seeing the Mana flaring off my fingertips. "He isn't -er, involved with her or anything. She's just a powerful demon who's been, well, taunting him a bit."

"Oh," I said coolly.

"Totally platonic," Micky assured me.

"Right."

"In fact -I don't think it even _counts _as platonic. They're not even friends."

I looked blankly over the grand staircase that led to my citadel, not saying anything.

Ophelia chuckled. "Pram's status doesn't matter to Salome. The point is, she's with Zetta."

"Salome, no-o-o-o-o-o!" Micky yelled. But I couldn't hear him for very long. By the time my Mana spell was over, he was out of my Netherworld and halfway across the cosmos.

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By the time I heard that Pram the Oracle had likewise branched off and acquired her own Netherworld, my own empire was almost entirely in ruin. I looked out from the front gates of my palace at miles of empty streets and tumbling masonry. Many of my soldiers had defected to the countryside, and I didn't have the resources to bring them back. My remaining defenses were loyal but meager.

And I knew I was close to death.

I hadn't cast a Mana spell in several years, jealously guarding it in case of some disaster. I smiled painfully at myself. I was still so powerful, but it was a power that could no longer be replenished.

I tried preparing myself for death. To my surprise, I found I wasn't afraid of dying, just saddened, slightly disgusted. I'd failed to destroy Seedle; I'd failed to win Zetta's heart; I was failing at being an Overlord.

And, always in the background, as intimate as the beating of my heart, was my wish. It was a foolish wish, but I knew that it was all that I really desired any more. The power of an Overlord hadn't satisfied me. Striking off on my own hadn't fulfilled me. In the centuries of my afterlife, I could only think of one era I had been happy in. And so I could think of only one wish that could make me happy before I died.

And with my wish came my plan. I examined it from all angles, shearing off variables and inconsistencies. I streamlined it down almost to the last moment. And I lay in bed at night wondering when I'd have the courage to put it into effect.

And when I was in bed at night, I even practiced. "Zetta," I whispered.

I cleared my throat, re-pitching my voice to a slightly higher note, a longer, less-sure inflection. "Zetta."

I closed my eyes, adding the slightest quiver to my voice. "_Zetta_."


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's note and other things:_

_Those who are observant will notice that this note is very different from what it used to be. This is because I've edited __Wishes__ to align with the site's guidelines, removing every in-game quote. Since paraphrasing the characters' lines would only undermine their quality, the game scenes have either been removed or telescoped.  
_

_For the most part, I haven't edited the original story. Any changes I made were to remove lines or to reword old lines, as well as altering a few grammar errors I found. Similar changes have been made to earlier chapters, but chapter 8 and 9 are where it's important._

_As before, the story begins when an angry Oracle named Pram blasts the unfortunate Valvoga to the far reaches of the cosmos._

8

Some time later, less than a year, I awoke to the sound of Micky screaming in anguish.

_Odd,_ I thought to myself. _Micky's not here_. Then I realized the scream had issued from a significant distance. Most likely he'd been fighting some hero's party outside his Netherworld, and I was just hearing the tail-end of it.

I got up and thought how deathly quiet my Netherworld sounded. A century ago there had been crows squawking outside my window every morning. Now, nothing. Even the animals had moved on.

I bathed, dressed and went to my balcony to survey the dismal morning. The sky was flat and waveless, showing no signs of stars. Off in one of the courtyards, I could see a thin line of patrolling soldiers.

I went for a walk the next morning in the dead gardens, ancient stone walls and walkways choked with brittle vines and snapping leaves. That was the reason it took Asperis so long to find me.

I found her mincing towards me, moving as quickly as she could in her tight, floor-length dress. "Lady Salome!"

"Yes. What is it?"

"There's been, uh, news."

I frowned. "What about?"

"All of the other Overlords have convened."

My heart began to thud. Was there some sort conspiracy against me? Why _would_ there be? Granted, I hadn't ever been very popular among the others. "Why?"

I'd never told Asperis my history, but she'd guessed a few things about me. "Lord Zetta's in trouble."

I went cold. "What? How could _Zetta_ be in trouble?"

"Well...apologies, Lady Salome, the story sounds pretty fantastic, but it's entirely reliable. Lord Zetta has...turned into a book."

I blinked. "Heh?"

"He's a book."

I glanced from side to side, as if looking for confirmation somewhere. "Is... 'book' a special term for a powerful Overlord?"

"No, he's a -a book. Hardcover, bright red. About twelve by nine inches, five-hundred and fifty pages, high-quality vellum."

"_What?"_ I demanded.

"What happened is that yesterday, Pram the Oracle prophesied that someone was going to rewrite the Sacred Tome and destroy Lord Zetta's Netherworld. So he went down to the Forbidden Library to investigate, and he _did_ find one of Alexander's cronies -but Alexander has said he didn't know anything about any prophecy. Well, Lord Zetta opened the Sacred Tome and read-" She hesitated, watching me uncertainly.

"_Yes?"_ I prompted.

"On the front page of the tome was written 'Lord Zetta is stupid. His foolishness has doomed the Netherworld to extinction.'"

"No," I whispered. I wasn't upset that someone had called Zetta stupid. I was upset because I was remembering two things: that the Sacred Tome held the essence of everything inside Zetta's Netherworld, and that Zetta was constitutionally unable to bear insult stoically.

"Lord Zetta was angry," Asperis went on, "so he set the book on fire."

"Zetta," I whispered.

"He realized his mistake at the very last second. While he couldn't save his Netherworld, he managed to confine his soul to the Sacred Tome. So Lord Zetta ...is the Sacred Tome."

"Is he hurt?" I asked anxiously.

"Well, I'm not sure he _can_ be hurt. He doesn't have a body. But I heard that he got set on fire earlier this morning and was pretty irate about it."

"On fire?" I repeated. I decided not to waste time on stories. "Wait, why doesn't he use his Mana to bring his Netherworld back? Has he lost his power too?" I finished, voice slightly hysterical.

"Apparently all his Mana is still inside of him. But he's the Sacred Tome. He would have to be able to write on himself that his Netherworld existed again for it to happen. And, well, none of the other Overlords are going to do it. It would probably use up enough Mana to kill them."

I considered my options. No, in my sorry state, even I probably didn't have the means to restore him. I compressed my lips in frustration. "So what's being done about it? Is he just going to be _left_ like this -a book?"

"Well, I can't say the idea hasn't been discussed among the other Overlords. But Pram the Oracle has said that Lord Zetta's old Netherworld will be restored as soon as he gains a new one."

"...Do explain that again."

"Each Overlord is writing in the Sacred Tome, wishing part of a new Netherworld into existence. Lord Zetta (being a book, unable to kill, unless maybe he falls on someone from a high window) is using his soldiers (Star Overlord Valvoga wished some of them back into existence) to conquer each level. When he concludes eight levels, Pram the Oracle has said he'll have his Netherworld and body back."

My head and heart were hurting for obviously different reasons. I put a hand to my forehead. "How is he doing?"

"He's gone through three levels since yesterday. Almost halfway there."

I took my hand away from my forehead and squared my shoulders. There weren't any arguments to be made. I had to see him.

"Asperis," I said, "I'm going to-"

And then I started coughing up blood.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was probably the longest and fiercest attack yet. When it was over, and I regained some level of strength, several hours had already passed. I braced myself and cast a somewhat difficult Overlord spell, the spell that sent my Netherworld into motion across the cosmos. I gripped my window sill as the entire planet, atmosphere and all, shook. I quickly saw I wasn't the only Overlord to have moved house to be near the crisis. I could make out Valvoga's Netherworld as well as one I wasn't familiar with through the sheen of sky-water.

I took a moment to breathe deeply and collect myself. I glanced out the window to the garden I'd been walking in. I could still see my blood on the paving stones.

I closed my eyes. My blood, my sickness, all that was staying here. I spoke, projecting my voice with Mana so that the whole assembly would be able to hear; I unlocked my store of carefully-rationed Mana to speak one word: Zetta's name.

Then I unlocked my Mana further. I transported out of my Netherworld, soaring across the universe in a white sphere. The arrival of my Netherworld had announced me fairly well, so I wasn't surprised to find all eyes of the assembled Overlords on me when I materialized.

I didn't really register them at first. I glanced at the horde of faces, the black sky and stars beyond and found-

His face was still there, almost. He was, as Asperis had put it, hardcover, bright red, about twelve by nine inches, five-hundred and fifty pages of high-quality vellum. A line of rippling flames edged his front cover. His eyes were there, as well as the tattoos, and his nose and frowning mouth, but everything else was gone. A blue globe was under his face, swirling with Mana.

I didn't laugh, my mind trying to reconcile both images, the strong Overlord I loved and this helpless book.

Zetta's rancor at seeing me didn't make it easier. Nor his assumption that I was there to mock him. Nor could I get close to him.

But it only became truly difficult when Seedle, smiling, announced to the assembly that I was dying, losing Mana day by day. Nothing I said could retract his words; no display of power could convince the Overlords I was still their equal - or had ever been.

I searched for sympathy in Zetta's face, but I did not find it.

No matter. They could mock me, by I still had the power to do what mattered.

"So." I cocked my head to one side. "Is it my turn to create a new level?"

"You don't _have_ to," Zetta snarled charmingly.

I bowed my head. "You aren't going to accept any help from me?"

Zetta looked away. I think I could feel some of the other Overlords leaning forward. Didn't they have anything productive to do?

"Fine!" Zetta spun back around (he was pretty mobile for a floating book) and snapped his front cover open. "Be quick about it!"

I formed a pen out of Mana and walked over to see what had been written on his page. There was that prophecy that had started this mess followed by Valvoga, Babylon, Seedle and King Drake each contributing part of the new Netherworld. Feeling a small ache as I expended more of my Mana, I wrote: _A new level is created in the name of Lady Salome._

I drew back and Zetta snapped shut. "Good. I'll see you all later." There was a haze of pale red light, and he was gone.

There was bit of a silence after he left.

"So," King Drake said, by way of opening a conversation, "how weak _are_ you, Lady Salome?"

"Not so weak that you've _finally_ found someone more pathetic than yourself," I replied. "So I'd stop smiling."

"Hrmph. We'll see, we'll see. Don't get too cozy in your Netherworld."

"Oh _please_," Pram said. "As if you could take a Netherworld from a half-chewed doggy toy."

Drake whirled on her, sweat beading across his furry forehead. "_You_ be quiet, dammit!"

"Some nice reunion we're all having," Seedle said, close enough that I felt his breath on my shoulder.

It took all my willpower not to move away from him. I looked over my shoulder; he was only about a foot away. Not wanting to draw the rest of the Overlords into this give-and-take (they'd all ganged up on Drake for the time being), I kept my voice quiet. "Would you like to be stabbed again?"

Seedle replied first with an ugly laugh. Then, "Why the hell are you even here? You should be locking yourself in your citadel, hoping we don't come and take your Netherworld by force."

"I don't see you trying at the moment."

Seedle ignored that. "As for Zetta, you're damning yourself. Do you know what he called you when you left?"

I looked away.

"Salome the Traitor."

My heart thudded painfully. I lifted my chin as I turned back to Seedle. "I think I've heard that title before."

"Just thought you should know." Seedle waited for me to speak. When I didn't, he went on. "Zetta isn't going to _thank_ you for this! And if he knew you've been providing him with power for the last century, his pride would probably make him kill you. You're wasting your Mana on nothing!" He laughed. "Aren't you happy?"

"No," I said, grasping at my own hope. "But I will be."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"So, Zetta," Micky asked several hours later when Zetta appeared back into the cosmos, "how's everything going?"

"Fine, fine," Zetta grumbled, perhaps still annoyed that I'd followed him into his Netherworld. He'd rejected me yet again. Now he looked around. "What are you all doing?"

"We're sitting in a circle with books in our laps, isn't it obvious?" Pram answered.

Zetta bared his teeth. "Is this some elaborate set-up for _another _damn book joke?"

"Tuh!" Pram tossed her hair. "_No._ It's not_ all _about you."

"Like hell it isn't!" Zetta shouted back, not in one of his benign moods.

"Actually," Micky said, coming forward, "it was my idea. I thought we should spend our time, well, a bit more constructively while you work on conquering your Netherworld."

"So...what are you doing?" He finally registered Micky's appearance. "And why are _you_ wearing a chef's hat?"

Micky clasped his four hands. "Well, I'm working on volume sixteen of my _Cocatrice Soup for the Overlord's Soul_ series. And I thought it would be a _fabulous_ idea to invite everyone to contribute a story. What do you think?"

"I think you're cracked," Zetta informed him. He stared at Micky a long moment. "Your oven mits match your hat."

"_And_ the apron!" Micky threw his arms wide to display the pale mint green chef's ensemble. "Doesn't it_ rock_? Even Dryzen likes it."

"HEH HEH!"

"Why are you dressed like a chef?" Zetta demanded.

"Well, it's _dinnertime_," Micky explained. "And since we're all here together...for once... I thought I'd whip up some manticora manicotti!"

"Gog and Magog..." Zetta breathed.

Micky clapped his hands together once. "It's almost _ready_, people! Let me go check the oven!" He zoomed off with surprising speed.

Zetta looked over at us. "So...you're really contributing to this damn book?"

"Oh yeah," King Drake effused. "It will be a guidebook for future generations of Overlords."

"Heh. So you're admitting you're going to be defeated. Oh wait...you already were defeated! Hyaaaa hahahahahaha!"

King Drake sniffed hard. "Don't -don't bring that up-"

"Oh yeah? Why not-"

"Dinner is _seh-erved_!" Micky yodeled out. He commenced doling out plates heaped high with thick noodles, subtly spiced meat and mozzarella-romano-provolone cheese. "Eat up. You'll love it, I promise."

It really wasn't that bad at all. Micky joined the circle, and we all chewed in silence, Micky looking at our faces and beaming with pride until-

Micky's face crumbled. "Zetta? I-is something wrong with your portion?"

Zetta was glowering down at his untouched plate. "Oh no," he said. "It's just swell."

"B-but...why aren't you eating any of it?"

"Huh? Oh, I thought I'd just fall face first into it and roll around in it a bit. I mean, it's not like I can eat or anything. I don't have a digestive track, it got lost, along with the rest of my Netherworld, I'm just a freaking book in case _you somehow couldn't tell_-"

"Oh...I didn't think about that..."

"Well I'm glad _somebody_ did. Let's just grab some manicotti and smoosh it around in Zetta's pages, huh?"

"Would you like some book paste?" Pram asked sweetly.

"NO, I DON'T WANT ANY BOOK PASTE!" There were several minor explosions.

Pram shrugged. "Sheesh, fine. Don't get your pages all dog-eared."

"Well," Micky said miserably, trying to keep what was left of the dinner going, "how are the contributions coming?"

"I've finished mine," Babylon spoke up. We all glanced at him, trying to imagine how a gigantic, limbless gray dragon had been able to write anything. "I wrote about when I first became an Overlord. My biggest rival was a dragon named Bahashmut, and he had_ two _arms, _two _legs and _two_ wings. I felt very outclassed. But I prevailed in the struggle. I made Bahashmut's legs into trash cans, his arms into hat racks and his wings into shower curtains."

"Very good," Micky said. "It'll teach young Overlords not to be wasteful. Exploit _all_ of your enemies' resources."

Drake cleared his throat. "I wrote down one my earliest childhood memories. I remember I was with my father, that august Overlord King Drake the Second, may he rest in eternal peace lulled to sleep by the screams that resound across the Netherworlds. Anyway, one morning when I was very young, he took me through his citadel to the topmost tower. From up there, I could see all around the Netherworld, vast and powerful. And my father said, 'Li'l Drake, let me explain the Circle of Life to you. Things are born. Other things kill them. Then they die, and other things eat them.' My father was frankly very disgusting. He went on to say, 'This Circle of Life is totally messed up. What you must learn to do is take this Circle and turn it into more of a Pretzel of Life, so that you're the one doing all the killing and eating-'"

"Here's _my_ story," Seedle spoke up, shoving his fork straight down into a noodle. "Once upon a time there was a samurai named Seedle. He was dead. Aerfa, the Overlord of the Underworld, pissed him off one too many times. Seedle killed Aerfa and used his blood to repaint his bedroom. The end."

"That's...er, good," Micky said. "Shows that an Overlord can be both powerful, thrifty and, um, aesthetic. Well, here's mine. I'm going to tell the story of how Ophelia, Dryzen and I met and, well, got so close."

"No you're not!" Ophelia spoke up.

"Whuh? But why?"

"YOU SWORE YOU WOULDN'T TELL!" Dryzen cried. "YOU PINKY SWORE!"

"How?" Zetta wanted to know. "Did he pinky-swear with _himself_?"

"If you tell our story," Ophelia said, "I'll rip out the jewel in the middle of your chest. I'll rip out the jewel in your forehead. I'll rip out your horns and your wings and two of your arms. You'll look just like Gollum."

Micky was quivering. "O-oh..."

"Oh _come_ _on_," Pram said. "Stand up for yourself, for once!"

Micky shook his head. "N-no! She could do it, she really could!" He leaned forward and whispered, "Her hair has _powers!_"

"Augh!" Pram tossed her hair. "Well, my story is of the latest rebellion that happened in my Netherworld. A bunch of private school girls stormed my castle, angry because I'd changed their uniform to look like my dress. Started giving me crap about how their 'frilly hoop-skirts couldn't get through the doors'. How they thought_ my_ outfit was ugly! Well, I put that down fast. I let them get up to my front gates, then I knocked them all onto their sides. Because they were still in their hoop-skirts, they rolled all the way back down main street, out of town and off a cliff."

"Very good," Micky said. "Shows you need more smarts than just Mana power to be a successful oppressor."

I glanced down at my paper. "I wrote about the time I found King Drake rooting around in my citadel's rutabaga garden."

"Gah!" gah!ed King Drake.

"I don't like rutabaga, but he still shouldn't have been there. He said he was starving and hadn't eaten for three weeks."

"It was true, it was true!" King Drake insisted. "And if you'd had a drop of feminine kindness in you, you wouldn't have -you wouldn't have-"

"I said that he should go ahead and have as many rutabagas as he wanted. I piled about six of them into his arms. And then I sprayed them all with Buggin' Out Double Whammy Pesticide. I didn't want him to eat a worm or anything."

"And then you made me eat them!"

I looked blankly at him. "You said you were starving."

"I was sick for three years!"

I nodded. "And you weren't hungry."

"And," Micky declared, "it shows that kindness and generosity can indeed go hand in hand with savagery and inhumane bullying. What about you, Zetta? Are you going to contribute?"

"Maybe I'll add the story about how I stifled Dark Lord Valvoga with his own manicotti."

"Zetta -that's kind of not...in the _spirit_ of things..."

"_I_ think it is."

Micky looked quickly around our circle. "Who's ready for desert? It's terrormisu."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After dinner, I took one look at Zetta's jet-black mood and wondered if my presence would bring the light back into his heart or make him consider annexing my Netherworld. In the end, I followed the examples of most of the other Overlords and left him alone. Except for Valvoga. I stayed well within eaves-dropping distance as Valvoga edged tentatively towards Zetta, and Micky asked, "Are you... doing okay, Zetta?"

"FINE."

Micky began to methodically twiddle his thumbs. "Well... that's good. Um... I was just thinking, uh..."

"Great. You're thinking. I'll throw a party. Whoo hoo, break out the confetti, Micky's THINKING."

"If maybe... when you get your Netherworld back...maybe you could give me back my drill collection?"

Zetta scowled. "No."

"Aw, Zetta..."

He shook his head firmly. "No. I need them. I need them much more than you do."

"Whuh? Why?"

"Because _I_ have a Netherworld worth defending!"

"Actually," Ophelia purred, "you don't."

Zetta glared slit-eyed at her. "But I _will_."

"Aren't we greedy?" Ophelia sing-songed. "Why even bother? Why not build a new Netherworld from scratch? Zetta's Book World we'll call it."

Zetta exhaled through his teeth. "I'm getting my old Netherworld back. And then I'm taking over _yours_!" His voice started to break a bit with emotion. "If I don't get my Netherworld back, then my whole damn life will have been for nothing!"

Ophelia pursed her lips in an exaggerated pout. "Ooo, and how sad that would be."

"Zetta has no li-ife, Zetta has no li-ife!" Dryzen sang, rocking happily back and forth.

"What are you talking about?" Ophelia asked. "He has an amazingly long shelf life!"

"Oh golly," Zetta commented, fairly articulately considering that he was talking behind a half inch of teeth. "They've thought up _more_ book jokes."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I hardly slept that night, tossing in bed for hours, racked by pain from my illness and anxiety for Zetta, wondering whether building a new Netherworld would really restore him. Though Zetta remained cold, I comforted myself with the knowledge of my plan. I would save him, and then, at the last, I would have one consolation in return.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The descent of Alexander into the crisis did little to ease my spirits. I hated to see that Zetta would talk more freely with his rival than his former apprentice. However, everyone's attention was soon claimed by another, a small, green-eyed girl who walked among us without a qualm. A girl absolutely no one could account for. And a Hell Kitty, which was still odd, but at least could be explained.

After she'd introduced herself and left, I walked over to Micky (well, Valvoga, but I was talking to Micky). "She's called Trenia?"

"Yep."

I shook my head. "How's she surviving up here?"

"I don't know how she got here in the first place, but Zetta's ordered that no one is to harm her."

I raised my eyebrows. That didn't sound like Zetta. He hated little girls. Every year, he took a census of cute little girls and locked them in the Squirrel Oubliettes if he didn't have time to deal with them himself (or they didn't prove to be obscenely powerful witches). I glanced over at Trenia's diminishing figure. "Interesting."

About then, the shaking started. Not a rumble. Not the approach of someone's Netherworld. A _shaking_.

Most of us fell flat, voluntarily or otherwise. I struggled to keep my feet (I noticed Seedle was doing the same; we humans feel we have these stupid things to prove), flailing and thrashing to stay upright as the entire cosmos shuddered and shivered and kicked up its heels and did a violent sort of two-step. All too quickly, thin lightning bolts shot up around us, darting and spearing through the air, barely missing the larger bulks of Babylon and Valvoga.

All too abruptly, the shaking stopped. That was when Seedle and I came the closest to falling over.

"The One is coming!" Babylon wailed.

We all looked at each other.

"Oh no-o-o-o!" Micky wailed.

We looked at Micky.

"Does...anyone know what they're talking about?" Pram asked, shivering slightly.

"I think I remember...a nursery rhyme about The One," Drake thought.

I shrugged. "Isn't it just a myth?"

"No myth!" Babylon boomed. "No myth! The One is coming!"

Drake crossed his arms over his chest. "Probably just some dumb story."

Just about then, the cosmos rolled over and the shaking started up again.

Zetta found us at a good moment. Most of us were upright, but Pram and King Drake were flipping out. "What's the deal?" he shouted through the racket of colliding planets. After a few more seconds, the cosmos tired itself out and went still again. Those of us with legs waited for them to stop wobbling.

"I know what he's talking about," Ophelia spoke up. "The One is the entity that keeps the entire universe in order."

Seedle raised his eyebrow. "This damn place has some order?"

Ophelia went on. "The One is a cosmic arbiter, the balance of the cosmos. Anyone who tips that balance - who becomes, for example, too powerful - falls prey to The One's justice, and is destroyed."

We waited a bit on this quaint revelation.

And then tried to talk ourselves out of believing it, even as Babylon spun out a long story about how The One had come to destroy him in his youth, had cursed him, dooming him to die within three days. Babylon had only fought off the curse by expending most of his Mana power. Which accounted for the wandering mind, long naps and snot bubbles, I suppose. Even with that, we didn't want to believe. I only began to feel uneasy when Seedle claimed that his spies had heard rumors of The One; Babylon harping on about some cosmic arbiter was one thing, but Seedle gaining information on him through a complex network of spies was another.

It was while we were all fretting that Alex slammed in and offered to help Zetta rebuild his Netherworld. It shows what a state he was in that Zetta hardly argued. And left to continue his conquest, leaving us to worry about The One.

Never did you see such a group of Overlords so eager to maintain balance in the cosmos. Seedle and I stayed well away from each other. King Drake got out a novel and pointedly refused to face Pram. Dryzen probably had forgotten how to speak. I wandered over to Alex and said hello, and we traded some stories of our mutual past ("D'you remember the time Zetta tied me to the trunk of his favorite porcuphant? I'll get him back for it. I've been developing a wolverine-armadillo hybrid.") After awhile Alex went to chat up Pram. Zetta was gone, working through the Netherworld Alex had written up for him. I crossed my arms, a bit cold. Would everything work? Would Zetta be able to get his Netherworld back -in time? I closed my eyes, unsure how much time was left.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I'd told Drake, as he brandished The One's limp corpse in my face, that I was perfectly willing to die in Zetta's place. It had been an honest statement, but it had also been an inspiration to me. Everything suddenly fell into place in my mind. Everything could -_would_- work out. Even with Zetta cursed, he and I could both fulfill our wishes.

I looked up. It was time.

"So..." Micky looked hesitantly at Zetta. "What now? What are you going to do, Zetta? You've been cursed by The One!"

"It's old news, Micky!" Zetta shot back. "I know exactly what I'm going to do." He waited a bit so we could all look expectantly at him. "I'm going to get my Netherworld back! C'mon, I have only one level to go! Whip it up, Pram!"

"Uh...Yeah." Pram shook herself a bit. When she was done writing, she twirled around haughtily and said, "That should do it. You'll have your Netherworld soon enough."

"Great!" Zetta said, more fiercely than was strictly necessary. In another moment he was gone.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

With Zetta cursed, Alex having an emotional meltdown, and my own time running out, there was no point hesitating.

I turned around, and the first person my eyes lighted on was Micky.

That would be fairly easy. I transported back to my Netherworld, surprising Asperis in the middle of straightening my bedroom. She looked up quickly, "Lady Salome! Is anything wrong?"

"No," I said. "But...be ready for action within the next few hours. I want you to collect the troops into defensive positions, beginning five miles out from the citadel. Can you do that?"

She bowed. "Of course, Lady Salome." She raised her eyebrows, hoping I would divulge.

I randomly selected three demons whom I considered trustworthy. "Could you bring me Octavienne, Eusebius and Jojo?"

While I waited for them to show up, I drafted a letter requesting Dark Lord Valvoga's appearance ASAP as the final boss for the new game _Threads of Jade Tears_. I ended it with a row of $s. When the three demons showed up, I instructed them to get in their most official-looking togs and hand the letter to Valvoga. I told them to report to Asperis when they were done.

Then I called for three of my more powerful witches, Iaso, Ketesh and Myrrh. "I have a very special task for you three. Go attack Pram the Oracle's Netherworld."

They'd all started out as healers, but even they had to open their eyes. "Lady Salome?" Iaso asked.

"Just get her defenses busy for awhile. You can come back as soon as she shows up. But I want you to tie up her Netherworld for a solid minute or two, all right? Can you do it?"

They glanced at each other. "Yes, Lady Salome," Iaso said.

When I arrived back in the cosmos, I noticed that Seedle had gone. Only Pram, Trenia and Babylon were still there.

I unlocked a small amount of Mana. It probably wouldn't take much for the old coot.

"Oooh!" Babylon moaned. "Arrrgh!" His face squinched up in pain.

"What's wrong?" Trenia asked.

"I dunno-" He winced. "It must be my -ow!- damn arthritis, acting up. Oooo! I need, ergh, I need my purple pills. I'll be back in, egh, a while." He rippled off arthritically to his Netherworld.

I glanced over at Pram. An underling demon had appeared and was speaking rapidly to her.

"WHAT?" Pram demanded, sparks shooting out of her hair. In a second, she'd flashed out of the cosmos and was gone, taking the subordinate with her.

I glanced at Trenia. She glanced unconcernedly over at me, then sat down and started trying to catch that moth on her finger.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Myself so close to death, it probably wasn't prudent to duel Alexander, who was by no means a weak Overlord. But I knew he wouldn't hesitate to kill Zetta, even in his current state. It called for intervention. Zetta objected, but I didn't the hell care.

I hadn't brought my katana from home. Wielding its considerable length would just have been an unnecessary waste of energy. I drew a long sacrificial dagger Zetta had given me a few centuries ago after one of our better victories, the Immortal Edge.

"YAAAAARGH!" Alex screamed, throwing about seventeen thunderbolts at me. I weathered that and responded with an Omega Wind. I watched him spiral around in the air and land on his head, but he was ready with an attack, using a shaft of lightning to stab me in the shoulder. I spun free of the weapon. The assault hadn't been strictly physical, so I wasn't bleeding. I eyed him, teeth clenched behind my smile, thrilled to be dueling, fighting again. My entire being was ready to win.

_Remember,_ I told myself, _your battle won't end here._

I shot forward, tossing Alex into the air in a whirling array of blue rings. I jumped to join him in midair and spliced him about ten times, sending him crashing hard to the ground. As soon as I landed, he was up in the air again, dancing directly above my head on a storm cloud, hitting me with lightning bolts. I shut my mind off from the pain and sent up my blue rings a second time. They caught Alex fast. He began to struggle, rippling and flashing with electricity. I jumped up and only had to slice three times before he fell helplessly back to earth.

I stared down with marginal satisfaction. Not as spectacular as my old duels, not nearly. But still, I had dueled again and won.

As soon as Alex vanished, I relaxed my Mana. Which was a good thing because the agony that was coursing through my body had reached its climax. I had just enough presence of mind to turn away from Zetta before my torso fell forward and warm blood gushed out of my mouth.

I looked at my hand. It had caught some of my blood, bright red pooled in pale skin. More blood was splashed in the grass at my feet. Zetta was scolding me, bawling out his wayward disciple. I had to laugh, though it came out faintly. I tasted the blood on my tongue. It seemed like such a foreign, disgusting substance, yet it was so closely part of me. There I was, part of me, in my hand and on the grass.

I was seeping out of myself.

A spasm started in my stomach and rushed up to my chest. I held one hand to my forehead, the other to my heart, trying to press the pain flat. I could feel the quick, insistent pounding of my heart, like someone trying to get out. I sucked in breath through my teeth, pain carving away at my skull, digging into my brain to see if all this suffering_ had been worth it_.

Yet Zetta's words, callous as they were, helped soften the struggle. My sacrifice had been sufficient - it had made him the strongest Overlord. It would save his life. I laughed, very slightly, relief easing the pain for just a moment.

I looked at the blood in my hand. I wanted to tell Zetta that it was his, it was spilled for his sake alone.

Another drop of blood fell from my lips. I gave the blood in my palm one final look, then closed my hand into a fist and held it to my heart.

And asked my question.

And because he was too stunned to answer, and because I knew what he would answer, I transported away.


	9. Chapter 9

9

I walked out to the front of my citadel, to the wide glass steps that still ran year after year with blood. I stopped a bit in surprise. The white marble dais at the stair's top had been surrounded by ghostly white roses.

I heard Asperis' soft step as she came up behind. I turned to look at her. "You heard there's going to be a wedding?"

"Or a funeral."

"Asperis..." I turned to look at her. "You should leave. I dissolve your servitude to me."

She shook her head. "No, Lady Salome."

"There's no guarantee Lord Zetta will reincarnate you."

She sighed. "But there isn't much to live for, is there?"

I turned away. "Thank you." I walked onto the dais, watching the weakly shifting sky. My Netherworld was dying. When I was gone, Zetta might be able to restore it, make it useful again. I stared down the steps.

Iaso arrived and told me that Zetta was easily breaching my lines of defenses. I nodded. I knew he'd come, not to marry me, but to try to talk sense back into me. My heart lifted. He had come, at last. I told her to light the ghostlights that lined the avenue to the steps.

Then I walked onto the dais, gauging how much of my Mana remained. Enough. Especially if I were sparing.

I cast a simple spell that transformed the black and white dress I was wearing into a long white bridal gown, a simple strapless sheath that was only adorned by a white sash. I raised my hands to my head and created a short, sheer veil, held to my head by two flat silver roses. As an afterthought, I added long white gloves.

My remaining defenses had gathered around me. Three hellbouncers which I positioned on the bottom steps, three liches further up. My two bodyguards I put on the top steps, in front of the dais. I put Asperis on one side of the dais, Iaso on the other. My head wizard, the last of his unit, was stationed behind me. Then I cast the spell that rendered them all invisible.

Then I stared back up into the dark sky, a cold wind on my chest and neck, my heart in my throat.

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My face was frozen.

I opened my eyes. Darkness surrounded me, as thick as stone walls. My face felt heavy and painfully cold.

I needed a moment to orient myself. I was still lying as I'd fallen on my dais. My palms were touching the ground. It seemed to be the source of that incredible coldness. I ran my fingers across it, trying to dig my nails into it, see if this was pavement or ground or carpeting...

It was cold and dry and a bit dusty. I tensed. The surface was made of freezing bone.

_Zetta..._ I shut my eyes, trying to shut my mind from the memories. That life was behind me forever.

_At least he has my Mana now. At least he has a chance of destroying the curse and not becoming weak and pathetic like Babylon._

I sat up uncertainly, running my hands down my arms and across my body. My wounds were gone; aside from the cold, I wasn't in any pain. I got slowly to my feet and almost tipped over in a wave of vertigo. The darkness closed in and sprawled out interminably to either side. Was I standing right side up? Was something out there? Was my body really even there? I literally couldn't see a thing. Nor, I realized after a long moment as I tried experimentally to clear my throat, could I hear anything.

The first hell hadn't been like this at all. I'd woken in fiery heat surrounded by others. But what was I supposed to do here? Stand here and be silent for all eternity?

I took a deep breath. This was a darker hell after all; that might not be so far off from the truth.

"Was it worth it, Salome?" I heard Seedle say. I whirled -the view behind me looked no different. Then I realized the voice had come from myself; I was imagining what Seedle would say if he could see me now.

_Well,_ I thought,_ it was. Even if...my wish never fully came true._

I had been standing still for a few minutes when a faint haze appeared out of the darkness. I stared at it, watched as the light spread, revealing the long, white road I must be standing on. I couldn't make out much of the landscape, barren with tall, twisting rock formations. In the far distance, I thought I could see mountains.

_There's no better place to go now._ I frowned, thinking how much my first death had changed me, how upset the Priestess Salome would have been if she could have looked into the future and seen the Overlord Salome. What would this hell turn me into? I took a step towards those mountains.

Immediately, the darkness closed around again, and my pathway was gone.

I stood irresolute a moment. _Well, dark or not, it's still there._ I began walking again, ignoring any thoughts of Zetta, unable to hear my shoeheels striking the bone road. I extended my hands in front of me, a desperate hope that I might touch something increasing with each step. I could feel panic building in me, that damned sensation when I knew terror was taking over, and I couldn't stop it. I reflexively reached for my Mana. There wasn't any. I searched inside myself and found absolutely nothing.

I pitched to a halt, legs shaking._ I can't - I can't keep walking like this, going nowhere, not seeing anything-_ I tried to think of some way to kill myself in here. But that would just take me to a deeper hell. My mind was reeling. I could see myself spending eternity killing myself over and over again, descending forever, searching for some end to this torture.

A soft light appeared about twenty yards in front of me. I tensed, watching the light spread. Though I was sure I hadn't altered direction, the light revealed a new scene -the long white road stretching away. It led to an enormous skull, some merging of animal and human with long, scything horns. The skull had no bottom jaw, and the sharp front teeth jutted like the spikes of a portcullis over the road. The eye sockets were filmed over with thick cobwebs.

I looked to either side. Two tall walls ran parallel to the road, their tops so high I could barely make out the row of spikes running above. The sky was pale and flat and looked as if it too had been meshed over by webs.

I looked ahead. It was the only place to go. I started moving forward.

The dark closed tight around the landscape, and I was back in total blackness.

"No," I whispered. I couldn't hear it, but I felt my throat move and my breath run through my teeth. I dashed forward, hands outstretched. The avenue hadn't been long; I should reach the skull in a few moments.

I ran until my legs shook; I tumbled forward onto my hands. I banged my knuckles against the bone road, scraping, trying furiously to draw blood. Nothing worked. I clenched my teeth, holding a scream back, sides heaving with panic.

And then I really did hear Seedle this time, laughing.

I tried to shout his name. All I could hear was his voice.

"You know whose Netherworld you're in now."

I flexed my fingers. No Mana, no weapon.

Seedle laughed. "I can see you. I can see _every_ move you're making. Ha, don't try shutting your eyes. It makes no difference here.

"Are you thinking of getting yourself killed _again_? All right, I don't mind meeting you further down. I'll help you. I've been waiting for this a long time, bitch."

I felt a strange hand run up my shoulder to my throat. I lashed out with my fist and connected with nothing. Seedle's unseen fingers snapped around my windpipe for a moment, squeezing it almost playfully.

"I'd say you think you know all about this sort of thing," I heard him growling. "Dying unjustly. Well, eternity allows plenty of time for revenge."

He used his other hand to grab my jaw and shove my head back. "You seem to like getting yourself killed, Salome. What, didn't you ever have anything to live for? No, you always have to be _stubborn_...Giving up Mana when it's not wanted... Not trusting a man who protected you with his life. Heh, maybe you got the best of me there."

Was I blacking out? Was there a roaring in my ears? Impossible to tell.

Seedle laughed raggedly. "So, how should I kill you this time? I'm tempted to rip open your throat with my teeth, but maybe that should wait until tomorrow. What do you think?"

My hands weakly fell from his. My scrabbling fingernails hadn't done any good. I was barely aware of myself. I felt something cold -his teeth- against my windpipe.

I heard Pram shout.

My eyes snapped open, and I crashed back onto the road as Seedle dropped me. "What?" he hissed.

The darkness was shimmering, full of sparks growing larger as they spun around each other. I stood up, finally able to see Seedle in the light cast from the spell. He looked amazed one moment, irate the next.

I looked back at the spell. It was a portal.

Several sparks shot off the gate towards me, latching onto my shoulders and hips, pulling me towards the vortex. "Damn!" I heard from Seedle before he vanished, and then I didn't hear anything else as the light from the gate -the Gate of the Dead- intensified. I shut my eyes against it, feeling the light sear into my body. I heard voices - Zetta - Trenia (_Trenia?_) - then Seedle, shouting with rage.

And the next thing I heard was Pram's agonized scream.

The gate shot me backwards, the beams of light tossing me back into darkness. I fell hard, my shoulder striking the bone road. Pain burned through my shoulder, all the sharper because it couldn't draw blood.

I watched helplessly as the Gate of the Dead spun itself out and left me in darkness.

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I stayed there a long time, waiting for Seedle to come back. Do you think I should have tried to escape, try to devise some way to fight him?

You're a fool.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that a patch of light and another landscape had appeared. This was of a ruined courtyard, with ivy grappling stone walls and choking a wide fountain and pushing apart the skeletons of soldiers scattered all around. I stared at it blankly, knowing that if I got up and started heading towards it, it would disappear like the others.

_How can I kill myself? _The next hell would be worse. The hell after that would be still worse. But if I managed to keep killing myself quickly enough, at least I could break the excruciating tedium.

And maybe, at the end, somewhere, I wouldn't wake up again.

I fingered my neck, not even bruised from Seedle's grasp. I pressed my long nails into my jugular, shutting my eyes, unable to break the skin.

I heard Trenia laugh.

And then I heard-

_My beloved Salome will be revived in my name, Lord Zetta._


	10. Chapter 10

10

There was a flash of light, and my knees hit the ground. Blood seeped out. I looked up quickly, feeling warm sunlight on my back.

I was in the middle of the Sacred Confine, white-clad novice priestesses surrounding me. I glanced around at the ring of wide eyes. Directly in front of me stood Ilasphel, the High Priestess.

"Salome!" she shrieked. "You're back from the dead!"

I bared my teeth. What the hell, _this_ wasn't supposed to happen- _Why_ was this happening? I'd been dead for a thousand years, why were these people even still alive -? Did time elapse differently in the human world? Hm, interesting, but not at all important at the moment.

Ilasphel had whipped out her staff. "I command your soul to leave us at once! Begone, damned traitor!"

"Ooops," I heard Trenia say in my ear. "We overshot that one a bit."

The light dropped around me again, grabbing me and pulling me out of the human world, through time and space.

I landed more gently this time, on my feet, the light bursting all around me. When the brightness faded, I found myself staring at-

We were in the foyer of his castle. The Sacred Tome -blue and unassuming- was hovering next to my right shoulder.

"Hm ho," giggled Trenia's disembodied voice.

I whispered Zetta's name. There he was, not some dumb book, _him_, flaming hair, blazing eyes and all. "You..." I could hardly speak or think, I was so astonished. "You brought me back."

He had a strange, closed expression on his face, an almost grim expression except that his eyes were so bright. They narrowed sharply. "Yes... I'm...very _angry_ with you."

I think I was afraid of crying. "You're back."

He was still staring hard at me. After a moment, he took two steps towards me, reached out and touched my shoulder.

I took a deep breath, elated and a bit afraid, only able to speak in a whisper. "You brought me back."

His eyes hadn't lost their troubled look. His hand went from my shoulder to my left cheekbone for a brief moment. "Do you know," he demanded, "what you've put me through?"

My elation was draining away, his grim manner filling me with unease.

Zetta frowned, his eyes brightening a bit. "You let me slaughter you!"

"You brought me back," I said, for the third time.

Zetta blinked. "Yeah. I did." Without any other warning, he reached his arms around me, and drew me so close I was lifted slightly off my feet and his face was pressed into my neck. After a moment, he brought me down to look into my face. I reached up and kissed him, amazed.

After a very long moment, Zetta gently broke away from our kiss and cleared his throat. "I'm _still_ angry with you!"

I smiled for pure joy, my hands sliding from behind his head to either side of his neck, feeling the strength of his pulse. Alive. We were both alive and-

A bolt of terror shot through me. "Zetta! The curse!"

"What the_ hell_ were you doing, Salome?"

"You didn't use all your Mana to bring me back, did you?"

"I can't believe you were leaking your Mana to me! Do you know what that means? You've made me a fraud, Salome! A damn fraud!"

"I didn't die so you could lose your Mana bringing me back! I wanted you to fight the curse and_ live_!"

"What am I supposed to do now? Pram knows, Alex knows, Seedle sure as hell knows, he told me!"

"No-! No, I can't lose you _again_!"

Zetta winced. "I still have plenty of Mana, don't worry."

"But..." I looked at him uncertainly. "I'm an Overlord. To bring me back, you must have-" My world, so happy a few minutes before, was crashing back around me. "You can't have enough Mana left."

"_Stop_ underestimating me. I'm Lord Zetta! I fear nothing!"

"Are you sure?"

He opened his mouth to reply -but hesitated. It was as good as any spoken answer. Despairing, I held him close, my face in his shoulder.

"Dammit, stop worrying. You're supposed to be_ happy_ to be alive."

I didn't lift my face. "I'm happy to be with you again."_ Even if for only two more days?_ I shut my eyes, searching through myself for some resource.

"Zetta-"

"Huh, what?"

"I have -I have some Mana!" I lifted my head, looking at my hands on his shoulders. They were radiating a soft blue light. "How?"

Zetta grinned. "Aren't I wonderful? If you can parcel off your Mana, I sure as hell can."

"But -it's only -it's not enough!"

Zetta gripped my shoulders. "Enough about the damn curse, Salome! I've got my Netherworld back, I've got my body back, I've got you back, I'll find a damn way!"

"Maybe-" I glanced over at the hovering tome. "That could give you an idea?"

"Eh...No. No, I think we should give the Sacred Tome a rest. I mean... yeah."

"That's fine with me," Trenia's voice said cheerfully.

I swiveled my head around, looking for the little girl. "What is..."

Zetta sighed. "Trenia's the soul of the Sacred Tome."

"Yeah, the one you pushed out."

I whipped around. "What?"

Zetta shook his head. "Later."

"If you want my advice," Trenia the Sacred Tome (...?) spoke up again, "I'd worry about the curse tomorrow."

"But-" I said.

"But-" Zetta said.

"You'll still have two days," Trenia interrupted placidly. "Besides, look at you two." She giggled. "I have some good ideas sometimes."

Look at us two? We started bobbing our heads at various angles of the compass, trying to figure out what she was talking about. I noticed it first.

!...How nice.

I tightened my arms around Zetta's neck and nestled back against him, hoping.

Then Zetta noticed. "Uh -I thought_ that_ was just part of your plot-"

"Well," I said, leaning closer, "it was. But I put a lot of thought into it anyway. I think it looks very good."

Zetta glanced at Trenia. "Why'd you bring her back in her wedding dress?"

"Because I'm psychic."

"Oh _shoot_," Zetta said feelingly. "Uhm...I wasn't expecting this."

I widened my eyes.

"...Don't give me that look."

"Zetta," I whispered, "we might only have two days left."

"Don't you dare."

"But-"

There was another long silence while we held each other and studied each other's eyes. Trenia whistled cheerily to pass the time.

"_What_?" Zetta said, so suddenly in made me jump. "You think I'm _not_ going to marry you? You think I'm _scared_ of you or something? What -do you think I can't -mmmphrrh- talk even though you're -mgglumph- kissing me? Hah, I defy you! Hyaaaaaaa hahahahahahaha!"

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After we wrote up the marriage contract, Trenia was let back into the Forbidden Library. Zetta refused to read ahead. Ever again. Maybe someday. However, the next morning (mid morning...okay, afternoon, yesterday had been a long day), we were back in the library, slamming books on and off shelves, searching for clues to break The One's curse. Zetta got Babylon on the hellephone and commenced grilling him for his methods. Babylon's memory swung around about four-thirty and yielded disheartening news. Zetta had nowhere near enough Mana to extract the cores from six-hundred-sixty planets, collect the water from four thousand oceans, wrench the hearts from two-hundred and forty-six demons, cook it up in a cosmic crock-pot and then drink the stupid concoction in one gulp. Sometimes, we'd figured, luck just favored two-hundred foot long Dragon Overlords (though we didn't put it that nicely).

All Zetta's scholars and battle monkeys were likewise hard at work. Zetta, pausing in his studies, often watched them in frustration. If nothing came up soon, we were considering killing all of them (reincarnating at leisure) and transferring their combined Mana into Zetta. But even that probably wouldn't be enough and might prove to be a waste of time and energy rather than a benefit.

"Maybe I should talk to Micky," Zetta thought aloud, looking up from an index of _Spells So Discombobulating_. "He might be willing to die and give me his Mana."

I looked up from where I was forlornly cuddling Kitt and Kiboodl on my lap. "You think you could convince Ophelia and Dryzen too?"

"Damn." Zetta dug his spoon through his pint carton of Ben Injury's Bloody Jalepeno Devil's-Food Chunk Poisonberry-Swirl ice cream. "I'd kill Drake but...what good would _that_ be to me?"

I hauled over another book. "This is no good. It's all about various ways of removing bathtub rings. And this one...This one is about turning the blood of your enemies into orange soda..." I sighed hopelessly, watching Zetta as he ate his ice cream. "Zetta," I said softly, "will you be dead by tomorrow?"

He glanced at me.

"Is this our last day together?"

He put his ice cream down. "What are we doing reading _books_?"

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But around seven, we were back at the books again. I sent Kitt along the very top shelves, looking for any useful books we might have missed. After he brought back the tenth copy of_ Complete Hamster Husbandry_, I let the dogs have a rest.

Around two-thirty I looked up. It took my tired eyes a few moments to make out Zetta's figure among the stacks of books. "Zetta," I whispered.

"Hm?" He tossed a volume embossed with the words _692 Ways to Cook Tears-on-the-Pillow-Pie_ over his shoulder.

"If you die tomorrow...I promise I'll find a way to bring you back."

He looked up at me. "How?"

"I'll build up my Mana again."

"And then-" He snapped open another book impatiently, breaking its spine. "And then you'll erase yourself when bringing me back, so I'll build up my Mana again, and I'll bring you back, but I'll die in the process, and then you'll build up again, and-"

"I promise, Zetta."

He gazed at me a long time. When he spoke, his gentleness surprised me. "We should get to bed." He snapped the broken book shut. "You'll need your strength to start this damn process."

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The next morning, the first thing I almost did was roll over and check if Zetta was still breathing. But as I opened my eyes, I first raised myself off the heated blood-bed (yes, like a waterbed... I never said Zetta had any class) and squinted out the window, trying to figure out who was doing heavy construction work on this most fateful of days, bull-dozing it sounded like, and maybe even swinging a wrecking ball into something substantial.

Oh. It was Zetta snoring.

We decided to take Zetta's last breakfast in bed, poached T-rex eggs, strips of wild boar bacon, Leerios, freshly-squeezed orange juice with vodka -all Zetta's favorites. We weren't going to talk about the curse and when during the day it might take effect and how I was planning not to let Zetta out of my sight once, not once, so we didn't really talk at all. Zetta absently shredded his bacon and fed bits of it to Kitt and Kiboodl (he didn't notice that both of them were drooling ecstatically on his lap).

It was a difficult choice to make. Spend the last day deep in the books, hoping to find a miraculous eleventh-hour cure that would be both lightning-quick and expend no Mana whatsoever? Or spend the day together? We compromised by carrying open books wherever we went.

Night descended over Zetta's Netherworld. From my position at our balcony, I could see the underlings hanging black wreaths on every vertical surface. Kegs of booze were being rolled through the street. I gripped the railing, unable to imagine how I was going to face my beloved's death. Zetta had been strong enough to watch me die, but could I just stand by helplessly when his time came?

The next morning, I awoke to find Zetta gone. I'm not using a euphemism, he was just _gone_. I sat up in bed, heart pounding, rage blazing through me at whoever had removed his body during the night -whoever had let me sleep while my love was-

I looked past the foot of the bed. Zetta was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, still in his pjs.

We stared at each other.

"Are you," Zetta asked, a bit heatedly, "about to say that I've been cursed to death by an ear of corn that can't even _count_?"

That morning was spent breaking up the funeral parties taking place around the capital. Zetta phoned Babylon around noon. "You remember anything about The One not being able to _count_?"

There was a confused rumble on the other line.

"No, I do not want to hear about your thrown-out back. I don't care if a limbless dragon like you_ is_ all back!"

I glanced at the volume of _Next Best Text of Hexes Complex_ in my arms and dropped it with a loud bang.

While Zetta and I were in one of the kitchens, frying up a dragon's heart (said to make him who consumed it invincible), I asked if maybe The One was still counting. Maybe he'd meant three _full_ days since Zetta had toasted him. There was another of those very long silences.

After noshing, Zetta went into one of his frenzies, overhauling the libraries, consulting the other Overlords on the phone. By late afternoon, he'd taken to sword-swallowing as a way to relax himself. He even gave Kitt and Kiboodl tummy rubs. However, whenever I saw him look up, his eyes were still sharp with tension. For awhile, his conversation scaled back to single syllables.

In the early night, after a silent dinner of blowfish and filleted barracuda, I left off giving Zetta a shoulder rub and dropped into his lap. He gave me a halfway blank, halfway hopeless look.

I kept my voice gentle, running my hand along his face and neck. "Tomorrow won't be the end. I'll bring you back."

He grimaced. "Right."

I arched my eyebrows, a bit challengingly. "You think I won't be able to do it?"

"Of course you will, but..." He glowered. "What's the point? What's the damn point?"

"To be together again, of course."

"Well, yes," he admitted. "But both of us so weak?"

I laughed shortly. "By our previous standards, we were pretty weak to begin with."

He sighed bleakly and held me close. Ah. I was getting the security blanket treatment. I linked my arms around his shoulders. "Isn't it worth any trial to be together again?"

"Are you still trying to justify crashing your Netherworld into mine?" Zetta demanded, "because-"

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The next morning I rolled over in bed to find Zetta perfectly still, not snoring, eyes shut.

People talk about hearts breaking, like someone's heart falls off a shelf and shatters. This wasn't like that. It was more like a bullet to the heart than anything else I can describe. Heart still intact, just useless. "Zetta-" I choked on a dry sob, reaching out to touch his cheek.

"Whuh?" he asked indistinctly. "Was'up, Salmay?"

I sat up straight. "What?"

He blinked his eyes open and yawned. "What? You said something?"

"You're still..."

Zetta looked down at himself. "Magog... What the hell is _going on_?"

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Over the last few days, between frenzies, Zetta had told me what had happened after I'd died the second time, how he'd been frantically searching for some way to write in himself a wish to bring me back. About how Pram had volunteered to do it and been stabbed by Seedle. And about how Alex had shown up, irate that yet another person was interrupting his feud with Zetta, and stabbed Seedle back, perhaps fatally. And then the whole business of Trenia confessing her identity and how she'd set out to teach Zetta a grand lesson about humility. Zetta and I had only heard from the others over the hellephone. Both Alex and Pram had survived the encounter. Seedle was silent, but we hadn't heard of any uprising in the Underworld and so had to assume he was still in power. I don't think that rested well in either my or Zetta's minds. Even Seedle, who had never been exactly a Mana powerhouse, might be able to kill us in our state.

Anyway, I was a bit surprised to see Alex and Pram show up in our front foyer later that morning. Both of them looked fine.

As usual, it took Pram to say the impossible.

Zetta's hair flared in astonishment. "The One? A_ fake_?"

"But -Babylon seemed so sure..." I faltered.

Pram put her hands on the area below her waist (come on, she has no hips). "_Babylon._"

Zetta was glowering a bit, hands on hips (actually, he doesn't really have hips either). "Trenia did say That One was_ her_ friend." His eyes narrowed. "Little bitch."

Pram's eyes rounded, then narrowed into little black spikes. "Huh? Just what are you talking about?"

Zetta crossed his arms. "Did she write that prophecy in the Sacred Tome_ too_?"

Pram flipped her long white hair. "Must've been her."

"So you're not going to die from that curse?" Alex asked.

Zetta's eyes brightened. "Hell, no!"

Alex punched the air. "Great! That means I still get to kill you!"

"Don't _think_ so, Alejandro!"

I wondered how we were going to get out of this if Alex suddenly declared battle. Zetta still had a lot of Mana, and his troops were primed for fighting, but maybe this wasn't the best way to commence this new stage in life.

Of course, then the front of the foyer fell in as Valvoga showed up. "Zetta!" Micky cried. "Oh, Zetta, you're alive! I thought -I thought I'd come here and see -"

Zetta threw back his head laughed heartily. "Thought wrong!"

Ophelia hmph!ed. Dryzen sniffed with disappointment. Micky soldiered on. "Uhhhhh -Look, I knitted you a burial shroud."

Zetta held up the bundle Micky had handed him. It was soft pale orange cashmere, decorated with little bloody swords. "Er... Thanks, Micky. This is great. It really is."

"Maybe you could use it for something else." Micky looked around the foyer. "It would make a lovely carpet. Or a quilt for your bedroom."

Micky looked around happily at all our faces. Then his eyes widened. "Waitaminute... Zetta, how're you _alive_? You should be _dead_! You zapped The One with your tiny, pupiless eyeballs!"

Pram spun around haughtily. "Huh! That One was a fake!"

Micky drew back in astonishment. "A fake? It couldn't be! You couldn't -you couldn't just pretend to be The One. The One would come and curse you, wouldn't he?" Micky shook his head firmly. "No, it just must be the power of Zetta's ego, that's all there is to it." He crossed one set of arms on his chest and placed his other fists where his hips would've been (if anyone in this universe but me actually had hips) and looked around with satisfaction.

Then his eyes widened. "Salome? You're here? I mean, you're alive? You're supposed to be _dead_, you're supposed to be dead _twice_. I heard all about it on SNN the other night, Zetta came through and splattered the walls of your citadel with your blood and er, well, maybe that wasn't the best of way of putting it. What the hell is _up_ with you two and not dying?"

Alex looked a little confusedly at me. "Yeah, I thought there was something weird about you being here."

"Tch!" Pram put her nose in the air. "I knew all about it already."

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We decided, for the time being, to leave the Netherworlds as they were. I said it was romantic, having them eternally smooshed together like that. Zetta said he'd get on it when he could spare the Mana. In the meantime, we both went into Mana training we'd been able to ignore for several centuries and got to work conquering lame Overlords again, accruing their Mana. And generally every other day or so, Pram or Alex or Drake had a stab at trying to take our Netherworlds. Drake never failed to bring That One with him and do a bit of brandishing. We heard he'd taken up corn-farming in his spare time. Meanwhile, Tulip de Montmorency showed up again and wanted to join forces. Zetta and I divvied up a considerable amount of Mana between us after her first visit (and her second, and her third).

The constant takeover attempts on the part of the other Overlords was actually extremely helpful. We won most battles and were able to absorb the Mana from our enemies' soldiers. Slowly, we began to gain power again. And, just like old times, we started to branch out. We took over half of Babylon's Netherworld. We reincarnated my elite troops (including Asperis) and set them to work training with Zetta's elite. We got some great motorcycles with knives on the hubcaps and the ability to shoot acid out of the handlebars. We commenced a new cosmic takeover and had never been happier.

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One lazy afternoon as we were boating on the Styx in Zetta's private barge, Zetta and I were stretched out on a deck chair, he reading the Roast, I busy knitting (we were thinking of annexing a few more of Valvoga's provinces, and they could get chilly. I just like to be prepared for any eventuality). I paused in my purling a moment to lean over and nuzzle his neck. "Anything interesting?"

"Remember those reports about missing ghosts? You know, all throughout the Underworld, human ghosts just disappearing?"

"Yeah."

"Turns out it's the handiwork of some human chick in a place called Ivoire. Apparently, she just summons the ghosts and makes them fight for her."

"Hm." I knit one and purled two. "Well, that's hardly unethical."

"Also there's been more talk about that new Overlord that's shown up. La Harlequin or something like that."

I laughed. "Those French-named demons are never tough. Remember Noir?"

Zetta bared his teeth reminiscently. "Ah, it's good to be powerful again." He glanced at me. "I saw you turning backflips in the dining room yesterday. Looked good."

I smiled. "I should be able to do some of my old moves again."

Zetta leaned over to kiss me. "At least _some_ things can go back to the way they were before."

"Are you still upset about my smashing your Netherworld?"

"You leveled my Pain Forests. _Leveled_ them. Do you realize how endangered the universe's Pain Forests are? We have to work to preserve these precious resources, and you _ruined_ mine!"

"Kiss me again."

He did and then glanced up at the sky. "It's getting late. When's the cook going to have dinner ready?"

I tapped my stomach. "I'm starving too. Here, I'll go check." I put my knitting down and got up.

As I was walking away, I noticed Zetta glance idly at the heap of black cashmere next to him. Then he gave a jump and picked it up. I stopped at the below-decks door to watch him.

Zetta held my knitting between both hands, his eyes taking in the generously-sized torso, the carefully formed sleeves that ended in little felt claws, the legs with wee little black booties, the two tiny bat wings affixed to the back, and the darling hood with the blobby devil horns. A great little romper, sized ideally for the most badass freakin' baby in the cosmos.

Zetta jumped up as if he'd suddenly realized his pants' seat had been filled with broken glass. "Salome!"

I laughed, patted my stomach again, and went below-decks to inquire after the roast bunyip.

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So you might hear this story again.

It won't be me, and it won't be Zetta the next time it's told,

because it's an old story-

-a story of giving up yourself to fulfill your deepest wish.

It's an old story not because it's about love and love is beautiful.

Love isn't always beautiful to look at. Love can be bleeding and unsure that it will live to see the morning.

It's because love is true,

and the truth endures long after we are here to know it.


End file.
